


I Really Can't Stand (Being Without) You

by bumblebee_rose



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 10:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 43,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20113540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumblebee_rose/pseuds/bumblebee_rose
Summary: The instinctual suspicion and dislike remains even now, because in the back of her mind she still imagines him as someone she has to beat, the set of tally marks in her head a clearer indicator of this than the slew of his passive-aggressive post-it notes she has saved in her side drawer. The feud between them is technically over, at least the career-related one, but she still hates him. Maybe it’s the fact that he can’t go five full minutes without humming some tune, or that he can’t walk through the main area without instantly charming everyone he passes or that he’s the most shameless flirt she’s ever seen. It could be the fact that he’s an utter asshole.It's this lingering sense of dislike that just seems to be inescapable after so long. She can’t stand him, is repulsed by most things concerning him. Especially his terrible taste in music, and his stupid signed jersey he convinced her to let hang on the one solid wall they have, and his affinity for covering all her post-it notes in wonky cartoon sketches, and most of all the annoyingly attractive crooked smile he seems to have reserved just for her.She just cant stand itTessa: 0Scott: 1





	I Really Can't Stand (Being Without) You

**Author's Note:**

> Very inspired by Sally Thorne's The Hating Game. Especially the part ab the eyes......it was too precious and sweet and i just had the huge inner need to write my version for this story. If you haven't read The Hating Game book yet i would 100% reccomend!!!
> 
> thank you to Ceci who helped with this fic when it was only 5k and gave me so much inspiration for so many parts of this story.
> 
> A gigantic thank you to @bucketofrice for being my #1 supporter and the best editor a girl could ask for. you are my superhero, i would be lost in a world without grammar or proper capitalization without you
> 
> enjoy xoxo

It is common knowledge at 1270 East Tower in Toronto that Tessa Virtue cannot stand Scott Moir. 

It is even more well-known that that simple fact has only given him ammunition for the past several years. 

High at the top of a marvel of a building is the Drawing Board Architecture and Design Firm where she just so happens to sit across from said repulsive individual, their desks separated by the small distance of a little less than a meter and a half and placed at a ninety degree angle to each other in front of the gold tinted all-glass walls that border their office. She has absolutely no idea what she did to deserve having to share an office with the most aggravating man she has possibly ever had the displeasure to meet, but she thinks it has to be something she did in a past life. Nothing, she decides, absolutely nothing she has done in the past thirty two years of her life could warrant the hand she was dealt when she was assigned to spend her tedious workday with him. 

Along the wall of glass that separates their coffin-like workspace from the rest of the firm are white roll-down shades that can cover the entire wall of windows from floor to ceiling if either of them please, not that they ever do go down. He’s kept them open every single day since the Friday he made her mad enough that she threw a white rubber eraser at his head while the blinds were conveniently down. He’d stopped talking like the air had been sucked from his lungs and she had gasped, covering her mouth with both hands, already prepared to take whatever punishment came with assaulting your coworker with an eraser when he’d started howling, tears forming at the corners of his eyes, and leant so far back in his chair that he’d almost fallen off. She had let her hands fall from her face and resisted the very strong urge she had to throw something much heavier at him, resorting to dramatically rolling her eyes and glaring at him sharply. She used to think that if she were ever made into a video game character, those two actions would be her signature move. 

She doesn’t know what it is that makes her hate him: Maybe it’s the fact that he can’t go five full minutes without humming some tune, or that he can’t walk through the main area without instantly charming everyone he passes or that he’s the most shameless flirt she’s ever seen. It could be the fact that he’s an utter asshole. Even her sister hates him; he’s known as “that jerk you work with” to her after multiple hour-long phone calls full of ranting. She just absolutely, completely, wholeheartedly cannot stand the man. 

It’s not that she’s jealous of him either — she can honestly say that with a clear conscience — because really, she isn’t. They’re the firms top architects, both evenly matched with her having the upper hand occasionally for her clear head and level thinking where he gets frustrated quicker than her. It never results in outbursts, just him leaving the room or half-heartedly kicking over the trash can full to the brim with sketches that sits by his desk. He was easier to upset when he was younger, and a lot of the new kids who walk through the doors remind her of how he used to be. She remembers starting out on the design team and watching him from across the room as he sketched past his paid shifts, always knowing exactly where he was in relation to her, furrowing her brows when he leaned back in his chair and let out a loud sigh followed by a groan before throwing a pencil across the empty room. 

She thinks it’s most likely the fact that they’ve been highly competitive since the beginning. Starting out low and fighting for a top spot at a high-profile, well-paying firm meant years of loathing and seething and watching over the others back; finding the best opportunity to rise higher. If she thinks hard about it, it was really all for nothing since they have the same position and work in the same office and essentially do the same job. Sometimes she feels as though if she knew what misfortune her future held, she would have worked a little less as an intern.

The instinctual suspicion and dislike remains even now, because in the back of her mind she still imagines him as someone she has to beat, the set of tally marks in her head a clearer indicator of this than the slew of his passive-aggressive post-it notes she has saved in her side drawer. 

The feud is technically over, at least the career-related one, but she still hates him. A lingering sense of dislike that seems to be inescapable after so long. She can’t stand him, is repulsed by most things concerning him. Especially his terrible taste in music, and his stupid signed jersey he convinced her to let hang on the one solid wall they have, and his affinity for covering all _her_ post-it notes in wonky cartoon sketches, and most of all the annoyingly attractive crooked smile he seems to have reserved just for her. 

She doesn’t realize she’s actually glaring at him until he breaks the silence in the room. 

“Take a picture T, it’ll last longer,” he says, curt and clipped, clicking his mouse six times to open what she guesses is Google. Either because he knows it annoys her or that he genuinely thinks he needs to click six times, every single time, is a mystery to her. It might be the one true unanswered question in her life, the case she never solves. It might even be her own “Scandal in Bohemia.”

She ignores the nickname he’s begun to call her even though she’s reminded him multiple times that she does in fact, have a full name, and brings her hands to her temples, sighing with an undocumented level of annoyance. “How many times do I have to tell you that you only have to click the icon once, just once?” She thinks it would be realistic for his right pointer finger to have the strength of one thousand men at this point with all the clicking he does. 

It’s a little known fact to those who don’t work in close proximity to the man himself, but their office is plagued by his incessant clicking at all hours of the day. If he’s really so clueless about anything with a screen, it truly is a marvel to her that he has made it to the top of the firm while still barely being able to work a computer but he knows how to use CAD and Gmail and Google and SketchUp and she supposes that's all he really needs anyway. Not that he couldn’t benefit from learning a thing or two. 

“I’m making sure it knows I mean business; I’m not trying to give Mr. Google the wrong impression when I search curves now am I?” he asks in a monotone voice and she snorts at that even though she doesn’t mean to. It might be a game between them at this point, how many rounds they can go before he actually says something not completely inhumane. 

The real reason she laughs is because her Google searches are equally as odd, somehow full of similar one word nouns and adjectives to draw inspiration from. Last week she found herself twenty minutes deep in a Google Images search for geometric flower pots and didn’t realize it until he asked if she was thinking of taking up gardening, tilting his head towards the dead snake plant with a smirk, which is apparently near impossible to kill and has since left her desk. 

“What are you drawing up, Scotty?” she asks, only a bit out of genuine curiosity but mostly because she likes keeping tabs on what he’s doing. He scrunches his nose at her with an impressive amount of distaste (that deep down she’s proud to have caused) out of hatred for her nickname for him, possibly more than she hates his for her, but doesn’t comment further on it. 

“I think the rec center would look nice with an overlooking curve on the east side up on the second floor. Give it some tall windows,” he says around the tail end of a ballpoint pen, turning his screen so that she can look at the 3D digitally rendered model of the building. However, in that moment she finds herself unexpectedly very caught up in his lips and the way his jaw contracts as he works his mouth on the pen and forgets how to form words until he removes the pen from his mouth and impatiently taps once on the screen with it. 

He has a nice mouth, she registers somewhere in the locked vault in her brain that stores all her thoughts about Scott. Right beside the fact that he has strong looking shoulders and parallel to her musing about his rather expressive eyebrows. It would be very helpful if he were hideous, impossible to look at. Unfortunately for her, that's not the case in the slightest. 

“Right here,” he says, hovering over the screen with the pen. “I don't know, I might send it back to design…” he trails off, shrugging, and she realizes that he must think she’s going to shut him down by the way she isn’t speaking. He stares at her a bit expectantly, looking slightly regretful to have asked her for advice in the first place, and deep down, even though she would never admit it, she almost feels bad for about a millisecond. 

She thinks the only moments when they do get along are when they’re bouncing ideas off of one another and working out problems. She doesn’t give him clipped answers when he asks for a second opinion, can put up with him as a working professional, less so as an over-enthusiastic sports fan, or really any other part of his personality. 

“I would do the west side, no?” she says, cocking her head slightly. “That way when the sun sets you’ll be able to see it, the golden light will filter in. It’ll be nice.” 

“I know you’re not in the business of keeping vegetation alive,” he says, his eyes cutting to the empty spot at the corner of the desk and she feels her cheeks burn. Turns out she can’t handle him as a working professional either. “But if it’s put there it will completely block out the sun and that’s where the flower beds are supposed to be,” he finishes, a stray curl of hair falling onto his forehead as he tilts his head in mirror to her. He got his hair cut short last week when, in an attempt to be civil, she had said his hair looked nice long as a casual sort of compliment, which prompted him to chop all the curls off until they only covered the top of his head. She thinks it’s a shame; he looked like a fairytale prince, or a boy band's lead singer. Not that she cares. She definitely doesn’t. 

“Move the flower beds,” she replies, “I’d have thought they would have been put on the east side anyways since they’ll get the most sun there in the first place,” she challenges, raising her eyebrows and he glares back at her for a second, his jaw clenching so hard she thinks it might pop, before returning to his mile a minute clicking. 

She swivels back in her chair to face her computer and counts to ten silently in her head before returning to her work, almost managing the mammoth task of building an invisible wall between the two of their desks. If she closes her eyes, she can almost picture it, a tall slab of pure titanium separating them so that she doesn’t have to hear him ever again. She’s sure she’s halfway to making it actually materialize when he stops his clicking to roll his chair over to her desk, begrudgingly sticking a yellow sticky note to her monitor. 

She grumbles his name before snatching it off the screen, smoothing it out between her fingers to find only a small note written there.

Tessa: 1

It’s in his messy handwriting that she can hardly read in the first place but she grins in triumph, smiling sweetly at him as he sinks lower in his chair. 

******

She thinks one of his most annoying qualities is the need to always be quicker than her. Quicker to finish lunch, to send in reports, to reply to builders, to meet clients for reviews. She thinks if the height difference between them was much larger than it already is, he would trample her getting to the elevator at the end of every day. 

It might stem from years of trying to be as efficient and well-oiled as possible when they were interns. She would listen for the finality of the clack of the enter key on his keyboard like it was a warning bell. Being second to him in any way seemed intolerable, a failure. Back in those days, the reassurance that he was easily distracted, was her only saving grace. As long as she didn’t look up from her drawing tablet she was safe. Watching him in her peripheral vision was the only risk she ever took. 

She makes coffee with the Keurig as slowly as possible that day, just to spite him. Loading in the pod and closing the lid and refilling the water tank like she has all the time in the world, chatting cheerily with someone she would barely talk to on a normal day just to waste his time, even if it’s technically wasting hers too. She can hear the tap of his shoe on the floor, can sense him looking down at his watch every few seconds and huffing behind her like an irritated bull, can feel his breath on the back of her neck. 

Whatever new intern she’s talking to— Sophie? Sophia?—eyes her warily a few times, noticing how clearly annoyed he is and looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. The taut line running between them that gets pulled just a bit tighter every day isn’t an unknown thing. They’re something of a legend in the firm, the two people who hate each other most sitting 5 feet away from one another. It’s a cruel sort of joke. Normally people avert their eyes and whisper behind computer monitors; some think it’s an act, the disdain they have for eachother, but the blinds that remain fully drawn all day long stop the rumours for the most part. Sometimes she feels like an animal in a zoo, like everyone on the outside is watching, waiting for something to happen. 

When she sees that the long hand on the clock has moved at least 8 spaces, she moves aside with a mug of coffee in one hand and his expression is almost humorous. His eyebrows are raised so high they’ve nearly disappeared and his mouth set into such a fine line it looks as if it’s been drawn on. What catches her eye though is the way his tie is sitting askew, half of it stuck to one side of his shirt. 

“Your tie is crooked,” she says impulsively, frowning, turning to place her coffee on the counter before using both hands to straighten out his tie and smooth it down against his chest. 

“There!” she says with a feeling of accomplishment as she flicks her eyes up to his, only to see all the colour has drained from his face. Somewhere in her subconscious she registers that the intern she has been talking to had stopped speaking too. It’s the same moment she realizes how close she is to him, the way her hands are still touching the fabric of his shirt and his racing heartbeat she can feel through his chest. He breathes out and she feels it on the tip of her nose. 

Somewhere an alarm in her brain goes off and once she regains the use of her legs, she makes sure to back up until she hits the counter. With how close he had been standing behind her in line, it really doesn’t put much space between them.

She looks up at him with wide eyes, her surprise meeting the shock in his own eyes, blindly searching for her coffee cup with one hand and sliding out of the tiny bit of space she’d managed to make between him and the counter once she finds it, her shoulder brushing his as she walks past. She has to resist the urge to scream as she makes her way back to their office, her heels clacking on the linoleum floor, not even cracking a smile when she hears his groan from across the room when he realises she’s run an empty brew cycle for the purpose of “cleaning” it even though she knows that Adam from design did it the other day. 

She shuts the door behind her with a shaking hand, taking a second to lean against it and breathe deeply before sitting down at her desk. She figures that even though she did the most awkward thing she could have possibly done, she can add a tally to her total for the day just for inconveniencing him. Every time she thinks about the moment they locked eyes though, her entire body tenses, contracts until she feels like she’s not far from cracking the mug due to sheer embarrassment. It’s then that she lets her head fall onto the desk with a soft thud. Working with him all day has taught her more than anything that it’s the little things that hit hard. 

*******

In some ways, she thinks that she’d rather barely tolerate him forever than attend another staff meeting. The one upside is that he can’t say anything directly repulsive to her for the entire duration of it. The downside is that she has to sit right beside him since all departments are obligated to sit together. Those are the days when she truly appreciates the space between their two desks, which feels like the Grand Canyon in comparison to accidentally bumping elbows with him while sitting in uncomfortable chairs and him kicking her in the ankle every so often to keep her from falling asleep. 

She assumes he must get a few tally marks for that, or even an award for model citizenship, since no one’s noticed she’s almost fallen asleep multiple times in meetings yet. If she’s being completely and totally honest though, even though she has bruises on her ankle the next day it’s the nicest thing he’s done for her to date. 

Neither of them talk about the time it was dark because a Powerpoint had been on and some official had droned on about the WHMIS safety steps for what had seemed like hours and she had fallen asleep on his shoulder. He’d let her too, didn’t disturb her once and had woken her up just before the lights went back on. It had been a rare moment of humanity on his part. She considers the idea that maybe he’s done two nice things for her in the full duration of them knowing each other. 

**********

The black shirt he’s wearing hugs his frame like a glove, white buttons all up the front and the sleeves rolled to his elbows. 

He looks up at her when she walks in, heels clacking on the black linoleum floor as she hangs her coat on the hanger she keeps in her corner. It’s gold with swirls along the top and a firm base that doesn’t tip even on the days she snatches her coat off the hanger to get away from him as quickly as possible. He doesn’t even wear a coat most days, says he runs warm while she must be cold-blooded. 

He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, looking at her for just a second longer than usual before turning his full attention to the screen again. In his square corner of property within the room is a desk full of sports memorabilia, several rolls of paper towels, a single piece of raw emerald, and, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a gym bag. The Leafs shrine that occupies his quadrant is evident by his sports fan brain. The one that streams the game on his laptop during office hours and tells her to have some pride for her country. The paper towels are for the coffee he knocks over far too often, spilling over the surface of his desk and accompanied by a curse word of some sort. She told him once sweetly as he’d mopped up the liquid that he should buy something with a lid and he’d rolled his eyes at her. The gym bag is for whatever recreational hockey team he plays for that warrants him throwing a huge ugly black bag in the corner. She hasn’t quite figured out the piece of emerald yet, a small slab of stone that sits beside his computer monitor and doesn’t move, ever. She realizes as she looks down at the knee length dress she’s wearing that she matches it today. Both of them donning deep greens like pine trees. 

Her designated workspace is the opposite of his, except for the same black reflective desk they both have. Her corner is soft and feminine, fresh flowers once a week and gold pens in a marble holder. She has a white mat over the surface of her desk so that it doesn’t scratch, while his is covered in marks, and carries her coffee in a sleek stainless steel travel mug. She has a small fold up mirror in her left top drawer that she uses to re-apply lipstick and she can always tell if he’s watching her by whether or not he makes a scoffing sound to her left. She picks her colours out carefully. Light pink for rainy days and white blouses. Nude for v-necks and meetings. Red for days when she doesn’t mind his gaze slipping down to her lips. 

She sits down in her chair, reaching into the left drawer for a mirror and chooses a peachy rose colour. Sunny days and researching for drawings. Pulling the cap off, she hears a familiar scoffing sound, the corners of her lips twitching up just slightly as she swipes on the colour. She folds up the mirror and places it back in the drawer gently before firing up her computer, logging on and opening her email. 

It’s tedious work. Replying to builders and contractors on design specifications, setting up times for her to swing by the site. She likes days on her feet where she can escape the cell-like prison that is the four walls they’re confined to. Sometimes she wonders what he does when she’s gone. Probably poisons her plants with whatever he used that one day he slicked his hair back to the extent that it shined as much as the floor did. 

It’s not long before the familiar red symbol at the bottom of her screen pops up along with the name ‘Scott Moir’. She sighs inside her head, rubs her eyes once, and opens the personal messaging tab they’ve figured out how to use and which, due to some marvel of space and time itself, is not company monitored. 

_“I need help,”_ is the message that pops up. Bait. Fishing line sitting in empty water just waiting for her to bite the worm. She flexes her fingers once over the keyboard before typing something short and pressing send. She’s half bored to death anyways. 

_“I can verify that no problem if you were looking for a second opinion.”_ She types back idly. Three dots pop up on the screen in succession before disappearing again. She flicks back to her inbox and starts a new reply before the little red icon pops up once more. 

_“Theoretically,”_ he types, and she readies herself for whatever’s coming _“if I were looking to take a ballet class, where would I go?” _ She freezes and can feel a breath of air escape her lips like her lungs are trying to empty themselves. She considers faking a telephone call, or escaping to the bathroom, or even fainting but all of those are merely a temporary out so she types out another response as quickly as she can and presses send. 

_“I wouldn’t know, but I don’t think they’d take you anyways. Brooding probably isn’t in the syllabus.”_ She glances at him out of the corner of her eye and can see his mouth twitch slightly, his eyebrows raising to his hairline as he hits the keyboard. 

_“That’s so interesting,”_ is the first message that makes it through, and even though she knows it’s coming it still makes her visibly flinch back in her chair when the message sends,_ “because I found the most riveting article the other day.”_ Accompanying the blue message bubble full of text is a link. She knows she shouldn’t click it because she can already see “The London Free Press” separated by dashes and slashes but she does anyways, sees his smirk from the other side of the room as he swivels around in his chair to face her. 

The title of the article is in big bolder text “London Dancers Fight For A Spot At The Ballet” And just below it is a picture of her. Her hair slicked back into a tight bun, no wisps coming free or bumps; there's a piece of white felt adorned with the number 17 pinned to her plain black leotard, and the drawstring of her ballet shoes is tucked away neatly. Her face is calm, determined as she sits in her right split, her arms held above her head, but she remembers that day and remembers how nervous she was. Below the photo is a caption reading: “Tessa Virtue of London, Ontario, warming up before the audition. She is one of the five dancers who was accepted to attend the second phase of the audition in Toronto during the summer.” 

She can feel a pressure in her throat and a shaking feeling moving throughout her body. She thinks she might throw up, or pass out, but both of those would mean he’s won so she exits out of the article and smooths out her dress, getting back to her list of emails with trembling hands.

“I didn’t know you were a ballerina, Tutu,” he exclaims with mock enthusiasm, gesturing to the small glass ballerina she bought in Murano that she keeps on her desk. “I thought that was just decoration, or some sort of missed life experience,” he isn't a stranger to her love of dance. Her ballet flats, her inability to do a messy bun, her playlist which consists of classical music. He’s called her Tutu ever since she came in one day wearing a soft tulle skirt she’d bought after longingly staring at it in a store for too long. 

She doesn’t respond but instead breathes deeply a few times, a hand pressed to her chest but she can’t stop the stinging in her eyes. She hates looking weak in front of him, hates him knowing that he’s gotten the best of her. She’s so focused on calming her shaking hands that she barely feels the tear running down her left cheek that she doesn’t catch in time. She sees his face shift to concern out of the corner of her eye, watches as he cranes his neck to see her face, furrowing his eyebrows when he realizes she’s crying. 

She misses it so much, misses her old friends who said they would stay in contact, and the stage, and the beautiful costumes she would wear, but most of all she misses the dancing. That feeling of moving. Letting go and flying across a studio, silk shoes tied to her ankles and her hair in a bun. _Nothing, no one _are still the words that run through her head, because she has always known that without ballet she was never anything special. Freckles and light hair she’s since dyed dark and her bruised knees from climbing trees in the rare months she was home. She sniffles a bit and turns her chair so that he can’t see her face, focuses on her breathing until it isn’t so jagged and forced. 

His voice is much softer the next time he speaks. “Hey, Tessa, I didn’t—” he starts but she cuts him off, sniffling once again as she attempts to pull herself back together. 

“Just— leave me,” is what comes out, curt and final and she hopes he’s happy. He’s won today after all, emerged victorious while she has to pick up all the pieces and put herself back together again. 

Scott: 1 

Tessa: -1000

She can already see his messily written recording of their current tally standings scrawled on a sticky note and pressed to her monitor; it wouldn’t be a stretch. Due to some miracle he doesn’t bother her for the rest of the day, keeps his head down and works in silence. In some ways it’s a blessing because she can honestly say she’s never been so productive or focused on her task but it’s also extraordinarily mundane. He doesn’t speak much except to ask her if she wants a coffee from the kitchen when he gets up to make one, or a piece of banana bread some intern over in design made. She says no to both because she knows it’s merely damage control but also because she doesn’t think she can stomach anything food-related after their earlier conversation. 

*******

She doesn’t know why he bothers with public transport at all, figures that maybe his car is so ancient and hideous that he’s too ashamed to park it in the fancy upper-level employee parking spot they’re both given. If she had a car she wouldn’t bother with the dingy subway or the cluttered underground terminal, but the way people drive in Toronto has always freaked her out too much to bother getting one. It’s cars piled on top of cars and honking horns and u-turns where there most definitely should not be u-turns. So she takes the subway, and so does he. Eyes flitting to one another, sometimes across a car full of people only to look away quickly. 

Overtime hating.

She thinks she should get paid for it; seven minutes tacked onto the end of her paycheck as collateral for the extra time she has to spend in his presence each day. 

So it comes as a shock to her when much later, while they’re riding that subway home to be exact, he brings the issue up again. They’re both holding onto the handle loops because all the seats are taken and she can feel his shoulder jostle hers every once in a while when the car makes a sharp turn. She’s never wanted to avoid him more but today some stranger made it their mission to walk as close as possible to her and she would rather suscept herself to his presence for a bit longer than carry her keys between her knuckles like claws and keep one hand pressed to the buckle on her bag. 

He looks like he’s about to say something a few times, opening his mouth and closing it like a fish but he doesn’t speak until they’re one stop away from her own. It comes out soft and careful, more subdued than anything she’s ever heard him say. 

“Why didn’t you become a ballerina?” is what he manages to string together, not meeting her eyes, his hand fidgeting with the left pocket of his pants. 

She doesn’t respond for a bit, but rather takes a moment to think of memories she hadn't let herself remember in a long time. In the summer the subway line is full of young girls in ballet attire holding dance bags with their hair in buns. Chatting amongst themselves and giggling when they get thrown off balance by the moving chaos of the underground. She remembers being them. Her first time away from home, taking classes all day and dropping exhausted into bed at night, watching movies with her roommates and going out for ice cream. 

“Sometimes surgeries don’t work,” is what she settles on, rocking on the sides of her feet and staring holes into the floor. “I would have been—” she whispers trailing off. She shakes her head once, then clears her throat before pushing through. “I started at the ballet school when I was nine, and I loved it so much, I really did. When I was seventeen, I started having problems with my legs and then I turned eighteen and I needed surgery. Two cuts up the side of my calves on each leg.” He winces and she laughs a bit sadly, “It hurt more having to sit and watch every rehearsal when all I wanted to do was dance.” She takes another breath, fights against the tightness in her throat and pushes on. “It didn’t work though and they didn’t think a second surgery would do any good. My mom couldn’t see me go through it again, I think she cried more than I did,” She admits nervously, her thumb subconsciously smoothing over the second button on her coat. “I was supposed to be part of the corps soon, they’re we’re going to accept me into the company. Everything was on track until it just…wasn't,” she finishes, looking at him for the first time since that morning. 

There’s empty silence for a bit, only the eerie sounds of the car running on the tracks and gentle murmuring filling in the spaces between their words. She doesn’t know how it’s possible for anyone to look halfway decent in the fluorescent lights of public transportation but he looks good as ever. His tanned skin still glowing and his muscled forearms taut as he grips the strap of his bag in one hand. She thinks she must look pale and sickly; she burns and freckles while he turns golden brown. 

“I was a figure skater at one point when I was younger,” he says cautiously, looking down at her. “My mom taught it, I did singles and ice dance for a bit but my partner quit and I liked hockey better anyways. They would make us do ballet classes during summer camp and I would get kicked out all the time for misbehaving. One time I hid in a closet because I didn’t want to go.” He says coyly, a barely there smile on his lips as he reminisces. 

“Really?” She laughs, and he nods.

“At the rink I would make snowballs with the shavings from the ice and throw them at girls or tug at their ponytails. I was a problem child,” he admits, shrugging his shoulders and she laughs at that too. “My brothers all did it too—the ice skating. We’ve always been a skating family, there’s an ice rink basically in our backyard,” he rambles softly, a hand raising to scratch awkwardly at the back of his neck. 

His face falls a bit and he scuffs his toe into the ground. “I’m sorry about before,” he says, “I didn’t mean to—” he starts before the car lurches to the side and she falls into him. He catches her around the waist, his forearm on her lower back as his hand grips the soft curve of her waist. His fingers dig in a bit as he straightens her out, his hand lingering a bit before he lets go of her. 

She can’t help the hitch in her breath or the colour that starts to rise in her cheeks, only grabs onto the strap of her bag a bit tighter and steadies herself. “Thanks,” she breathes, looking up into his eyes. They’re so dark in the light of the underground, the opposite to the light hazel they become in their all-windows office. “And it’s okay, really,” she tacks on as she walks backwards towards the doors. 

He nods once, looking like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders as she steps off the train onto the platform, looking behind her once at him as the doors close. 

It’s a weird thought, uptight hockey-brained Scott Moir being a figure skater, no less an ice dancer. She’s never heard him speak so carefully or softly, has never really thought of him as anyone other than the bothersome coworker she’s forced to put up with on a daily basis. It hits her then that she might never hear him speak that way again, certainly not in the office, and a small part of her is deflated by the thought. He’s so different when he lets his guard down, like he’s pulling off pieces of armour and setting them down at her feet, not worrying about what he might look like underneath. 

**********

She doesn’t know why she thought things would be different, that maybe it could be civil between them after all. She had essentially laid her heart on a platter for him, presented it finely like a delicacy, yet as she walks back into their office the next morning to be met by an eye roll over the top of his monitor she accepts they’re back to hating each other. 

She doesn’t know how he manages to get to work so early every morning. She suspects he doesn’t sleep and rides the subway line all the way back to the firm after she gets off just to stand in front of the doors and wait for the earliest possible moment to enter so that he can claim his quadrant of territory in their office. The remaining half by the door is no man's land and nothing resides there except for a small table with a few knick knacks scattered on top for decoration. 

“Would it kill you to get here on time?” is what he asks, tilting his head like he’s got all the time in the world to bicker with her. 

“I am on time Scott, I can’t help the fact that I have a busy life outside of this office. Not all of us can set up camp in the break room,” she says evenly, wrinkling her nose at him as she walks to her desk. 

“A busy life of—let me guess, just bouncing around ideas here—Tessa’s evening for five hundred, what is sitting in silence and burning salad.” She doesn’t use the microwave in the kitchen anymore, not since the time she almost set the whole building on fire trying to make popcorn. They had to open every single door they could find and run fans on full blast to subdue the smell of burning food. Every once and a while he would sniff the air and ask various fire-related questions. Whether she bought a new candle, if they opened a new steakhouse somewhere in the building, if she spent the weekend camping by an open fire and forgot to wash her clothes. 

“You can’t burn salad,” She retorts in a know-it-all voice, shooting him a dirty look. He rests his chin on his hand, smiling sweetly at her. 

“I’m sure you could make it work Virtch,” he winks, clicking a record of ten times on the chrome icon. He has an endless list of names for her. Tessa, T, Virtue, Tutu, Virtch, and among the worst of them, T-Dog, which she threatened to report him over. 

She rolls her eyes at him, deciding to abandon work for the morning in favour of arguing with him. “You’re insufferable; you know that, right?” she asks, eyes narrowing, and he smirks in response. 

“Glad we have similar views of each other; having corresponding ideas between coworkers is always good for collaboration and creating a united workspace,” he states, a pencil in his hand like he’s teaching a class. “There was a point to this whole conversation though,” he says casually, lining the pencil up with the side of his keyboard and she sighs. 

“Get on with it,” she grumbles, watching as he folds his hands and sits tall on his chair.

“I need to borrow your extra tablet pen; the cleaners found mine on my desk yesterday, thought it was a regular pen that just didn’t have any ink left and threw it out.” 

She laughs, the sound of it manufactured and tight. “That sounds like a you problem,” she informs him, logging into her computer and pulling up a finished design blueprint. “I don’t have an extra pen,” she lies, tucking in her chair and starting on her work. 

“Yes you do, I’ve seen it. It has a piece of blue tape around the middle so that you know it’s the extra one, c’mon Virtue.” 

“I don’t think so,” she says, putting a finger to her lips like she’s deep in thought. Her nails are painted bright red, a contrast to the nude pink of her lips. She taps her finger a few times before turning to face him. “You must be imagining things, too many early mornings,” she tells him sweetly, shaking her head lightly. 

“What do I have to do?” he says, irritated, “Grovel at your feet? Pay for your coffee?” 

She swivels her chair around to face him, steel in her eyes and fire on her tongue. “You insulted me as a way to introduce the topic of wanting to borrow my pen, so excuse me if I’m not following the logic there,” she fumes. 

He opens his mouth like he’s ready to argue back just as an intern knocks on the glass of the door nervously like they’re about to enter a dragon’s den. Judging by how furious she thinks she must look, she doesn’t think she’s too far off with that assumption. She smooths down her hair as he enters, folding her hands on the desk and smiling genuinely at him. 

“Hi Dean, what can we help you with?” she asks calmly, like she isn’t seconds away from tearing her coworker to shreds. 

“Mrs. Clarke wants to see you both in her office,” he says squeamishly, only half his body leaning past the door frame. 

Her first thought is they’re both being fired. He said something or someone heard something else or their personal messaging tab is extremely company mandated and they’re both getting sent to HR hell for slandering the company name with inappropriate work conversations. 

She whips her body around to glare at him. _“What did you do?”_ she seems to say to him through the air, to find him telepathically asking the same question, his eyebrows furrowing as she shakes her head in disbelief. She can ask him a multitude of questions through only her eyes, she thinks it’s something they’ve developed over the years of quietly seething in their corners. 

They both get out of their chairs to meet in No Man's Land, not breaking eye contact as they stand parallel to each other at the invisible line that separates them, their chests nearly touching as they stand in a silent faceoff. 

“Ladies first,” he says, gesturing with his hand to do the door and she walks past him with a laugh that sounds the opposite of humorous, her heels clacking on the floor. 

“What did you say?” he hisses at her, the front right side of his chest nearly pressed against her back as they walk. People look up as they pass, whispering amongst themselves. Some of them duck down in fear, pretending to focus on blank word documents while others shake their heads. 

“Nothing!” she whisper-shouts, clearly exasperated. He glares at her and she lowers her voice again. “I haven’t reported you in _weeks!_” she seethes. “This is your fault!” 

“My fault?” he says in a disbelieving tone, like the mere thought of it is impossible. “Our office is seventy five percent glass windows! You’re the reason we can’t put down the shutters anymore!” She logs this in her mind as a moment she is seriously considering tripping him and playing it off like it’s an accident but she’s not sure that would help their case. 

“You demanded we keep them open!”

“You threw something at me!” 

“A _tiny_ rubber eraser Scott!” She sighs, rubbing her temples. He feels so warm against her back, if she stopped walking his entire front would be pressed to her and she isn’t completely opposed to the idea. 

Before she knows it they’re at the door and Dean is poking his head in to let Mrs. Clarke know they’re both there. She elbows Scott in the side for good luck and he reacts only slightly before elbowing her right back. She then straightens out the collar of her shirt before walking in, prompting him to roll his eyes at her. 

Mrs.Clarke, who’s first name is Anna, is the head of Drawing Board Architecture and Design Firm. She has curly dark hair, an extensive amount of coasters and her nails are always painted the same shade of plum. Anna has always been the slightest bit clueless and an optimist to her death but she’s also smart and analytical in ways Tessa wishes she was. She gestures at the two open seats and that both reside opposite her, the two of them sitting down cautiously like they’re afraid the chairs might explode. 

“Glad to see we’re all in one piece today,” she says with a smile and Tessa gives her an understanding one back. Yes, them and their silly feud. “I know you two bump heads occasionally but I’m glad to see you’ve been working together lately,” she remarks and Tessa keeps the pleasant smile plastered to her face even though one million different questions are racing through their head.

In the past few days alone he’s made her cry, see red, laugh like a crazed woman and nearly tear her hair out. She’s not sure how any of it amounts to “working together” but she’ll take it as opposed to being reprimanded. 

“Scott says you helped him with a bit of the Rec Center,” she continues and Tessa looks sideways at him, receiving a sheepish grin and a shrug in his part before returning her attention to Anna. She didn’t think he would give her credit for that; he helps out with small things for her projects on a weekly basis. “I’d like to see you working together more; there’s a project I want you two to solely control from the design all the way to the finished product, I think it would be an excellent experience for you both if you’d want to take it.” She smiles, resting her hands on the top of her desk and Tessa uses all her remaining power of will to keep a pleasant look plastered to her face. 

Before she can formulate any sort of response Scott speaks up from beside her in a tone she’s heard maybe once from him in all the years they’ve worked together. 

“We would love to,” he says brightly. “That would be incredible,” he confirms, looking at Tessa with his eyebrows raised. _Say something,_ his face seems to indicate and she snaps back into reality.

“Yes!” she says suddenly, the words leaving her mouth before she even registers she’s saying them. “That sounds excellent,” she says in a tone identical to his and smiles and Anna tilts her head to the side as she presses a hand over her heart. 

“I love how much better things have become between the two of you. I’ll make sure to send the package to each of you. The project is a community center located a few blocks from here, the city thinks a new ice rink as well as a library and some other attractions would serve the area well,” she informs them, flipping through papers on her desk. “Scott, I know you played hockey so I trust your opinions on what a rink would need, and Tessa your eye for design is something to marvel. I expect good things from this, now shoo and get working. I’ll call the two of you in again after you discuss the project a bit on your own,” she smiles at them as if they’re her children, ushering them out of her office. 

The walk back is silent and several people watching shake their heads. She hears a “they had it coming,” and a “it was only a matter of time” and she assumes by the grave look on her face that the general consensus is that they've been fired and are to vacate the premises immediately. Once they’re both back in the room she gently closes the door and Scott doesn’t even oppose the gradual shutting of each and every blind that opens the room up into the rest of the floor. 

Only when they’re completely boxed in and the wandering eyes have lost interest does she sit down at her desk and drop her head into her hands. 

“What did we just agree to?” She asks weakly and he merely shakes his head before slumping back into his chair. 

Tessa: -100 000

Scott: -100 000

********

She walks back into the office the next day in a daze, feet dragging against the hard floor like they’re being held down by weights. The shocked faces of everyone along the way are no less baffled at her presence than she is. Two girls nudge each other with their elbows, someone peers over to check for a cardboard box in her arms, she hears a whispered, _“How can they still be working together?”_ And she can’t help but also wonder about the answer to that same question. The shades remain drawn, a white blanket that separates them from any outside contact and as she closes the door behind her the feeling of a jail cell has never been more evident. He’s sitting there already, as usual, and she doesn’t even bother looking over as she forces her legs to move herself all the way to her corner of the room. She can see a charcoal grey shirt in her peripheral vision and prepares herself for day one of their sentences. 

It comes as a shock to her but over the weeks they slowly adapt, with the first big change that occurs in their small treetop office being the desk situation. He thought it would be a good idea for them to push their desks together until they faced each other to make it easier to talk and work on the development of the project, but it has only prompted a series of almost-but-not-quite staring competitions. She’ll glance over the top of her monitor to see his hazel eyes already watching her, which will then send them both into a silent competition of who will back down first. He never does. Ever. She thinks maybe he doesn’t blink in the first place, watches him carefully as he works only to discover that he does in fact, blink, and starts on a new hypothesis for the unanswered question of why Scott Moir wins every not-staring-competition they have. 

She also learns of his odd affinity for a certain shade of green. She’s only seen it in the piece of emerald sitting on his desk and nowhere else. He wants to paint the community center with it and dash it all along the rink; she scrunches her nose and suggests a lighter cyan colour but he’s set on Desk Emerald Green. 

She thinks that for the first time in her entire career at Drawing Board they actually use the personal messaging system as it’s intended. He’s constantly sending her links to different things that catch his attention. Electricity grids and children’s playgrounds and famous pieces of artwork are among the things that inspire the outdoor center they slowly begin to design from the ground up. He sent her a link to a rather odd looking tea kettle once and she had sent back an article on the effects of brain damage on a person due to hockey related trauma. He’d laughed at that, clear and light like a bell, and she’d smiled a bit in return. Hidden by the screen of her monitor of course. 

Predictably, what doesn’t change is their dedication to the cause of hating one another. Strong as ever, the piece of barbed wire keeping them loosely wound together hasn’t lessened in the slightest. It’s his secretive nature that bugs her the most, the locked desk drawers and the hidden forms he’s typing on that she’ll never see. The shared Google document that they thought would be a good idea for quickly throwing together ideas has turned into a battlefield of copy paste lines, yellow highlighter, and snarky comments that are gradually getting closer to the brink of too far. The day she had typed a whole page of ideas with annotations and inserted pictures only to find it completely gone from the document after she left for lunch is a day she would not like to repeat. He had only said that it didn’t mesh properly with the rest of the design and she had seriously considered throwing his computer out the glass window to her left. He also uses her extra tablet pen now with the blue tape wrapped around the middle since the fact that he can’t draw without it is now a “her problem”. 

“Scott,” she murmurs, peering closely at building specifications on her screen. “Scott? Hey Scott?” She says a bit louder when he ignores her in favour of writing something out on a sheet of paper. 

“Virtue,” he responds evenly, flicking his eyes up to hers like the breath he took to respond to her wasn’t worth the turmoil his lungs had to go through to produce it. 

“I think we should add an extra bench over here,” she suggests, “make it transition into a taller table and put stools along that side. Push the lockers back so there’s a bit more room in between.” 

He frowns at her. “Then that shortens the indoor center, if we push the lockers back we reduce our floor space inside.” She doesn’t like his frowns; they turn his lips tight and pinch his eyebrows. Change him from a mellowed out artist to an agitated overtime worker. 

“I think it’s worth it,” she notes lightly, withholding her urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until his face relaxes again, choosing instead to look over the dimensions. “We only lose a few feet.” 

He sighs, pushes away from the desk, then leans back in his chair until it creaks, covering his face with his hands and groaning. “I can’t draw it out again, I feel like I’m stuck in design, fixing drawings all day. I may die here.” He tells her seriously, dropping his hands to the arms of his chair. 

“You’re so dramatic,” she sighs, putting as much emphasis as possible on her rolling eyes so that she’s sure he sees them. “If any of us are going to die in this room it would be me, dying of a rare condition unknown to man where the cause is being pushed to the brink of insanity by one’s coworker,” she informs him, clicking the Chrome icon twelve times because it seems fitting for the situation. 

The corners of his lips twitch up but he doesn’t grace her with another one of his blinding smiles, instead he tucks backs into his desk and clicks his mouse excessively in silent retaliation. 

“Fourteen is a record, you should be proud,” she remarks, not bothering to look up from her screen to see his reaction. 

“You flatter me,” he says mockingly, cocking his head to the side. “Not sure if that’s appropriate work talk though,” he informs her in a sterile voice. She actually takes ten seconds to count in her head and stare at the ceiling in order to formulate a response to find she really has nothing to say. 

“You’re so—” she comes up with eventually, wrinkling her nose at him instead. He merely raises his eyebrows like he doesn’t quite understand what she’s implying and goes back to waging war on his computer mouse. 

*******

“Tutu,” he calls, walking leisurely into their office like he’s the sole owner of it, hands in both pockets and jaw set. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye and stands a binder up on its side so he’s blocked from her line of sight. 

“Incorrect usage of company provided materials,” he states, flicking her barrier down and causing it to knock a mini stapler off her desk. She grumbles in annoyance and bends down in her chair to retrieve it. When she sits back up he’s leant against the top of her desk, the bottom of his tie draped over the dark material. She pushes down the strong urge to staple it to the desk. 

“Can you just tell me what you need so I can get back to working?” she asks in a cold voice, punching the keys on her keyboard a bit harder than usual. He’s been about a ten on the scale all day, throwing bits of paper her way and clicking like his life depends on it. She might treat herself and scream into her pillow until her voice is hoarse later that night. 

“Suddenly I’ve forgotten what it was,” he says artificially. “I’ll just stand here and see if my memory returns,” he informs her, poking at a tin of paperclips.

He picks up the acrylic tumbler from her desk and frowns at the lipstick stain on the straw, puts it down and then picks up the small glass perfume bottle, taking off the cap and sniffing it. 

“Stop touching my desk.” 

“I’m touching the things _on_ your desk,” he corrects, putting down the perfume bottle and picking up a stack of papers on the corner. He does all of it with an air of superiority, like he’s got nothing better to do than pester her. 

“Technicalities,” she mumbles.

“Technicalities are important in a field like this; someone at your level should be familiar with that,” he says as he flips through the stack of papers, eyeing each one curiously. 

“If you mix those up I will personally arrange your funeral,” she threatens, swiveling in her seat to stare him down. 

“I’m sure it would be a lovely affair: dollar store plastic flowers and vanilla scented candles galore. I can hardly wait,” he says in a monotone voice, staring right back at her. She quirks her left eyebrow and he does the same, tilts her head to the side and he mirrors her, she stands up from her chair and he straightens. He’s playing with her, poking the bear, seeing how close he can get before she strikes. 

She decides she won’t be losing today and gets up from her desk only to sit down at his, smoothing her hands over his mat and flipping through his planner. Two can play at this game. 

“What are you doing? Get off my chair,” he says, clearly confused, and she looks at him innocently. 

“It is company property and therefore neither mine nor yours so I’m free to sit wherever I please in this office.”

“Be my guest,” he says, shrugging coolly and sitting down at her own desk, leaning back in the chair and crossing an ankle over his knee. She picks up the piece of raw emerald and his jaw clenches, the side of his mouth twitching downwards. She smirks, holds it up to her eye and looks through the clear bit, searching for a secret message or pin code. The day she underestimates Scott Moir will surely be the day she dies. When she puts it back on the desk he visibly relaxes and she frowns, it’s weird enough that he has crystal on his desk but the fact that he’s so protective of it is suspicious. 

“Scott” she says, eyes locking onto his. 

“Yes, Tessa Jane,” he replies easily, with an air of impatience. He opens one of her side drawers and pulls out a tube of lipstick, pulling the cap off and twisting it all the way to the top before twisting it down again, popping the cap back on and putting it back in the drawer. 

It’s odd to look at him from the other side of the desk; he’s usually always in shadow, the light from the windows hitting his back and creating a faint glow around his silhouette. Now the light shines directly on him, illuminating his hair and skin and making the light brown and gold in his eyes pop. She’s almost relieved she sits on the side she does; she would spend all day staring at him otherwise and in no way would that be productive. Once she took a five minute break from typing out a form for a client to text her mom back and he accused her of theft by “stealing company time.” 

She opens one of his drawers and finds a picture of what must be him and his brothers in vaguely matching skating outfits against a white backdrop. Using every bit of strength she has, she just barely keeps herself from laughing and places it back in the drawer. Under that is a written postcard in loopy cursive that she can’t read very well and various worn hockey cards with frayed edges. She glances at him and he’s got both hands braced behind his head, staring calmly at her. She opens the drawer below the first and finds a post it note she’d scribbled on three weeks ago and left on his desk and three chocolate bar wrappers. Far in the back of her mind there’s a voice of reason that knows she should stop because it’s a major invasion of his privacy but she can’t make herself get up from the chair. She closes the drawer, runs her hands down the side of the armrests on his chair and clicks his mouse a few times. He watches her with an unwavering gaze, cool and focused and neutral the whole time, like he’s unaffected by the way she’s so blatantly invading his space. She however can feel every nerve in her body tingling, each hair on her head staring straight out from her scalp. She’s searching for clues like they might lead her to a hidden treasure, like there’s something here that might crack his exterior. She notices a locked drawer and has half a mind to pull a bobby pin from her hair and pick the lock right there. The anticipation of what might be in that drawer makes her mouth water. 

She comes to the conclusion right there that Scott Moir has turned her insane. 

********

One of the unfortunate consequences of being mortal enemies trapped inside a shoebox office with little contact involving anyone from outside is the sad fact that they’re essentially each other’s best friends at the firm. 

It’s largely the reason why months later, at the opening for a hall , they’re standing nearly shoulder to shoulder with twin glasses of champagne in opposite hands. He’s pretending he hasn’t taken notice of her open back and bare legs and she’s pretending she hasn’t been very interested in the crisp white shirt and suspenders combo he’s chosen. He looks like he belongs on a ’60s daytime television dance show or a black and white film. She can manage to tear her eyes away for a select number of minutes before they return to the cut of his shoulders and the tan skin showing beneath his rolled sleeves. 

The tight dress she’s wearing is a cautious mix of business and night out downtown. She’s a rosebud, in a darker blush colour nearing burgundy, the golden flowers twining around the heels of her shoes like snakes in the Garden of Eden. Her hair, pinned to one side, sweeps over her shoulder in soft curls and cascades like the branches of a willow tree. 

She can see the bits of him scattered throughout the place, his desk emerald green in solid stone accents along the walls and rectangular columns that separate sections of ceiling into pieces of an intricate puzzle. Even the floor plan is so casually him, laid out in a way only he would think to try. The arches are all her though, the way the ceiling slopes gently is something only her hand could create. There are tables covered by cream cloth placed throughout the room and live music and a dance floor full of swaying bodies and she almost remembers what it was like to move like that. 

It’s odd being the spectator, nearly fourteen years later, and she’s still not quite at the point where she feels content to observe. It was like ripping off a bandaid, the descent was slow sure, but the sting of leaving the studio for the last time felt like a slap on the face. She rocks forwards on her toes just slightly, angles her chest to the mass of dancing bodies like if she gets just a bit closer she’ll be able to feel it again. Maybe some of it will transfer to her if she’s lucky. If she could just get close enough. 

“You should dance,” he says softly, such a stark contrast to the silence they’ve been subjecting themselves to that she almost flinches. She can see him nervously twiddling the stem of his glass, the bubbles inside fizzing along the sides. 

“No I—” she starts anxiously, taking a step back and crossing her free arm over her stomach. “I don’t— I can’t anymore.” She can’t go out there alone and embarrass herself while he stands coolly along the sides; he’d never let her live it down. She hasn’t in so long and her feet feel like lead, she’s sure that she’ll step onto the floor and collapse. 

“What do you mean you can’t? T, you’re a dancer,” he says back, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion. He doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand that she can’t have some of it and leave later without a hole in her heart. 

“I _was_ a dancer,” she snaps, correcting him, and softening as soon as she sees his face fall and his form retreat slightly. “I—I don’t remember how,” she comes up with, shaking her head slightly, she thinks she might be sick, or pass out. 

“Lucky for you,” he says softly “I was an ice dancer from the ages of eight to eight-and-a-half, and I remember all the steps,” he says comfortingly, like he’s trying to calm a small child or scared animal. “C’mon, I can’t promise I won’t step on your toes but I can try,” he says, holding her wrist with a heartbreakingly careful touch. 

“If you’re trying to be convincing you’re doing a very bad job,” she says sarcastically. It’s nothing but a defense mechanism and he can see right through it.

“Do it for me then,” he replies effortlessly. “I heard Tessa Virtue was going to be here tonight and I’ve been dying to dance with her. She looks gorgeous in that dress I just hope she doesn’t make fun of my bad dancing too much,” he plays, searching her eyes carefully. 

“You said you were good at it,” she retorts, her cheeks turning red at his out of character compliment and curling in on herself further. There’s a part of her that wants to grab his hand and pull him to the middle of the floor, dance until her feet hurt and her legs won’t hold her up anymore. 

“It just so happens that I’m a liar,” he shrugs comically which makes her frown.

“Every girl’s dream guy,” she mutters, rolling her eyes as he steps closer to her. She can almost feel the heat coming off of him, figures he does run warm. She has always thought that there might be a furnace inside his chest.

“I don’t lie about everything” he says cautiously, his brows furrowing, and she watches his hazel eyes as they flick down to her lips, returning seamlessly to her own green ones. 

“What have you lied about?” she questions, holding her breath, every nerve in her body feels on end. She hates him, hates the things he apparently does to her. 

“The dancing—” he stammers. “Not the dress—or, you in the dress,” he finishes, shaking his head once and she doesn’t know why but she lets out a breath. “Listen,” he says, holding her by the elbows “you don’t have to be any of the parts that hurt, you can enjoy yourself once in a while. Just— please dance with me, if you don’t I’ll have no choice but to go by myself and I promise you nobody will be happy about that,” he says carefully, his thumbs rubbing softly against the inside of her wrists, both of their glasses somehow abandoned on the table nearby. She nods for some reason she doesn’t quite understand. He’s so close she can see all the different coloured flecks in his eyes, can trace the darker ring of brown around his iris and get lost in the green colour laced throughout. 

“Okay,” She says softly and his smile is lovely. She wants to frame it and keep it by her bedside; she doesn’t think she’ll ever get a smile like that again. 

“Show me what we’ve all been missing out on,” he says softly, a glint in his eyes as he pulls her to the floor. 

She learns that he’s not a bad dancer, but an atrocious one. He has absolutely no rhythm and can’t count on the beat to save his life but the smile that stretches across his face is so big that she feels a tightening in her chest every time it’s directed at her. After a few songs she makes him take off his shoes because he won’t stop stepping on her toes every time he attempts something more complex than a step to the side, a genuine _sorry!_ passing his lips each time he crushes her foot with his own. She also ends up taking off her shoes because he complained she had an unfair advantage over him and her feet were beginning to cramp up anyways. 

She thinks, while waiting for him to return with more drinks, that if this is the start to the reconciliation of their friendship, she wouldn’t mind it at all. She’s warm and flushed and maybe a little tipsy but she can’t remember the last time she’s had so much fun. His hands didn't feel odd in hers and the curve of her waist wasn’t confused by his touch. He had spun her at one point and it was contrastingly different to the way she used to pirouette in another’s arms, shaky and a bit slower, her feet tripping over each other as they searched for space on the open floor but it was something, a small piece of her dream that didn’t send her spiraling. 

“Tee? Hey Tess!” He calls endearingly, a glass of something fancy looking with a strawberry on the rim in each hand. His cheeks are a bit red and he’s got a dopey looking smile on his face, “This guy I met by the bar thought the archway over the hall over there was really well designed. I told them my mortal enemy did it and he asked what your supervillain name was.” 

“What did you tell him?” she asks back, giggling, accepting the glass from him and taking a sip.

“I pointed you out and told him it was TutuTess, I think he cowered in fear,” he says seriously, his eyebrows almost in his hairline. She wants to pull them down, smooth out his forehead with her fingers. 

She cocks her head to the side, squinting her left eye at him. “That was my old email, and it’s still my password for a bunch of things. Wait, actually— I didn’t say that,” she backtracks, pursing her lips, while attempting to make a neutral face. 

“I know it is,” he laughs, “you leave your computer unlocked all the time with your email open for anyone to see, sometimes even overnight, and you don’t have passcode lock on either, I’ve seen you type it in about a hundred times,” he states, his thumb making circles on the side of his leg. 

“You realize you just told some random guy my password then,” she deadpans, shaking her head a bit at him. 

“Didn’t think that through,” he frowns, “I blame the spinning.” 

“Just please don’t send a mass email from my old childhood account, I have too many burned bridges to account for,” she sighs, rubbing the sides of her temples. 

“Haven’t done it yet,” he winks, “but if I was on the receiving end, I’d be honoured to get a strange email from the girl who broke my heart in middle school.” 

“Ballet school,” she corrects and he makes a face as if to say _“of course.” _

“There was a studio with windows all along one wall, it has music notes all over it,” she pauses, reminiscing. “Anyways, you could see outside onto the street below and look down at all the people walking past, it was my favourite place to dance,” she tells him wistfully, smoothing a wrinkle in her dress, “sort of like our office but they were tinted blue instead,” she says, shrugging. 

“Well we obviously need windows like that somewhere in the new project,” he says, grinning at her. “Any chance you stole the large copy? I’m all for making last-minute changes,” he says, tilting his head to the side as her cheeks warm. 

“I can’t trust you!” she exclaims defensively. “You could erase everything I’ve done.” She fake pouts, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow. 

“I wouldn’t,” he says.

“You did!” She fires back, waving one arm around, “The Google doc!” 

“Yeah, I guess I did,” he admits, shrugging his shoulders. In that moment she uses her remaining sense of social etiquette to resist the urge to throw her drink at him. “Whatever, c’mon lets get out of here,” he smiles, linking his arm in hers and she downs the rest of her drink before she goes, suppressing her own smile to glare at him. 

She doesn’t know how to feel about letting him into her apartment. Now that he knows her address, he could very well appear in the night to wrinkle her curtains or steal her sugar or something equally as ridiculous. She’s a weird mix of happy and tipsy and deep down she knows he has no real interest in where she lives but she still puts a hand to his chest and stands in front of her door before they go in. The only noise in the empty hallway being the soft ding of the elevator. 

“Block this address from your mind, you were never here,” she tells him seriously and very slowly, looking up at him under her lashes. He’s silent and she takes the time to admire him, his forest eyes and sharp lines. There’s a lipstick mark on the arm of his shirt — her lipstick — but she doesn’t remember putting it there. It’s only then that she realizes how close she is to him; her hand burns on his chest even through the layers of fabric. In an act of betrayal that could rival Brutus stabbing Cesar her eyes drop down to his lips, holding there for far too long before snapping back up. The small part of her brain that has the thoughts of his nice lips filed away for later springs into action. It wouldn’t be hard. She could just lean forward the slightest bit and—

He lets out a breath that she swears she can feel too, tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “I’ve already forgotten it.” He smiles gently, stepping back so she can open the door. 

Her entire body stays rooted to the spot until she manages to break free of whatever stupor she’s in, shaking her head as if she’s in a daze and turning around to face the door, blinking a few times before she slides in her key and turns the handle. She’s positive she doesn’t want to kiss Scott Moir, blames it on the warm feeling running to the tips of her fingers and making her cheeks pink. They’re plunged into darkness and she searches the wall for the switch for a few seconds before they’re bathed in light. 

“It’s very white,” is his only comment as he steps past the threshold. “It kind of looks like a murder house. How much bleach do you use? Did you bring me here to kill me?” he asks suddenly and all in succession, turning to face her with an amused look on his face. 

“What?” she asks tiredly, rubbing one of her eyes, both of which are feeling very heavy, “Scott no, what do you mean murder house?” she questions, placing hands on both hips. She thinks that maybe if she looks big enough she’ll win, like birds in the jungle, widening her wingspan. 

“It’s too clean,” he comments, wrinkling his nose, “it’s like you’re hiding something.”

“You got me,” she sighs, pointing to a closed door in a dark hallway. “Right behind there is my stamp collecting room, which no one, especially you, will ever live to see,” she giggles, losing her serious tone of voice halfway through. 

“Not even if it was my dying wish?” he inquire,s and she shakes her head. “Is the drawing behind the door then, thief?” he asks and she frowns at him. 

“No, it’s in my bag,” she says simply, wobbling a bit as she toes off her heels. “Sit down somewhere. Maybe at the counter. Don’t touch my sugar,” she warns him, pointing a finger into his chest. His head tilts in confusion, but as she walks to get the drawing he makes his way to her stools. 

When she gets back with a roll of paper tucked under her arm he’s looking through her fridge with one hand braced on the wall beside him. 

“Tutu there’s nothing in here,” he says in a disbelieving tone of voice, poking his head up to look at her over his arm. “What do you eat?” he questions seriously. 

“Food,” she deadpans, she feels a bit dizzy. As she maneuvers herself onto one of the stools by the counter she feels her legs wobbling slightly while she climbs on. 

“I’m taking you grocery shopping one day,” he tells her, “due to the fact that there is one—“ he states, holding up his pointer finger for emphasis, “container of strawberries, a carton of eggs and—” he chuckles a bit, turning to look at her under his arm, “syrup, which doesn’t even belong in the fridge in the first place.” 

“Does so!” She argues back, her voice a bit slurred.

“You like cold syrup?” He asks, looking at her weirdly for a second before waving a hand in the air and shutting the door. “Whatever, forget it, we can argue about syrup all day,” he says quickly, sitting down on one of the stools at her counter beside her and she notices that he’s poured himself a glass of water, yet she can’t quite remember whether or not she showed him where the glasses were.

“My mom always put it in the fridge,” she says slowly, and he tilts his head to the side, smiling a bit. She slumps into the stool beside him, scooting a bit closer, “Oranges on the counter though, my sister loved them.” 

She hasn’t seen her sister in a while, or her mom. Maybe she’s gotten a bit too used to being alone in a big apartment. People had always thought it was weird that she didn’t mind being the only one in a place with so much room. Maybe Jordan had been right when she said she’d become too familiar with loneliness. 

“You’re so odd Tutu,” he smiles and she shakes the thoughts of her sister away, instead scrunching her nose at him, and propping her chin on her hand. Their knees are basically touching, every once in awhile she can feel the fabric of his pants against her bare legs. 

“You’re the weird one,” she says back, overcome with the sudden need to trace over his eyebrows, so she does, her face knotted in concentration as she smooths out the lines there. He laughs softly the entire time, eventually taking hold of her wrist to bring her hand down. 

She doesn’t pull back from him though, instead she leaves her body leaned in towards him. His lips are so close again, tinged pink and full. She really wants to kiss him. She shouldn’t, she really shouldn't, for a multitude of reasons it’s a bad choice to make, but for some reason it’s clouding her mind, filling her mouth with heavy sage. She thinks he might be leaning forward so she does too, her hand braced against his knee. He holds her around the elbow and the small bit of contact sets her alight. If she moved a centimetre more they’d be touching, she could count every thread of fabric in his shirt. Can feel a breath of air escape him as she melts into his chest. She lets her eyes fall slowly shut as she leans further into him. 

“Tessa, I’m not going to kiss you,” he says calmly, and she can feel each and every one of his words touching her lips the softest bit as he says them. 

He pulls away from her slowly, taking a sip from his cup of water and laying the side of his head against his hand. She jerks back. “Why not?” she questions indignantly to cover up her embarrassment, she can feel her cheeks start to warm. 

Tessa: - 1000000

Scott: endless points for the rest of his life 

His eyes flick away from hers to look downwards and seem to count the different tones of flakes in her counter. “You’ve had a lot to drink. It’s not real if it’s like this,” he states, drawing in the ring of condensation his cup left on the surface of the counter. 

“Not that much!” she defends, narrowing her eyes at him. She didn’t, and if she could just make the room stay still for a bit she could prove it. 

“You nearly jumped me in the hallway, I’m actually surprised I made it here at all,” he laughs lightly, turning to look around at her apartment. “Do you even remember the cab ride?” he asks, concerned, and she frowns. Maybe if she concentrates really hard. “You were leaning against me— lipstick on my shirt.” He frowns, twisting his arm to show her the rose coloured stain on the white fabric. 

“Why bother coming here at all then?” she asks, throwing her arms out to the sides enough that her stool wobbles. “It’s not like we got any work done,” she complains.

“Well, most of all I wanted to make sure you got home safe, I do genuinely care about you Tess. For a more selfish reason, you’re funny, and you don’t hate me either right now so it’s a win—win” he tells her, his hand finding her own. “You’re always glaring at me in the office, I hardly ever get to see you really smile so the change is nice,” he shrugs and she watches his dark eyelashes sweep over his cheeks as he looks down at their joined hands. She’s never noticed how pretty he is to look at before, like a marble statue or something you would find in Ancient Greece. His hair has started getting long again and she thinks he looks a bit like Perseus. 

“I don’t hate you,” she says quietly, shaking her head a bit until she has to stop because it’s making a dull throb start to develop. 

“You do,” he sighs. “Maybe not right now but usually you do. I don’t hate you, not at all though, don’t think that. I don’t mean to be that way, it’s just hard,” he sighs, starting to draw circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. She thinks she might pass out, or cry. “I doubt you’ll remember any of this at all, but really do think it would be better if you did,” he smiles sadly and she leans forward until she’s slumped against his shoulder. He smells nice, and he’s warm and his shirt is scratchy against her face. She closes her eyes, just for a bit, breathes him in. He doesn’t hate her. 

“Please let me kiss you,” she mumbles into his chest and he laughs, gently pushing her upright by her shoulders. 

“You need to sleep,” he states matter-of-factly, and scoops her up into his arms in a fireman’s hold, peering down a hallway before walking through it. She wraps her arms around his neck and breathes him in, lets his vanilla spice smell envelop her. He stops at a doorway and cautiously turns on the lights before stepping in. “I’m guessing this is your bedroom?” he asks in a questioning voice and she nods. “It’s really odd that you don’t have any pictures of anyone in this place, you know? You could perform surgery on the kitchen counter it’s so spotless,” he says and she can’t tell whether his voice is impressed or horrified. 

“It’s couture,” She replies easily, voice muffled against him. He chuckles softly before depositing her on the counter in her connecting bathroom. 

“What do you use for makeup?” He asks, picking up various bottles of serum on her counter and reading the labels. She leans against the mirror and points to the package of makeup wipes beside the sink, closing her eyes as he pulls one free. He’s gentle as he removes the dark from her eyelids and the pink from her cheeks, feather light strokes across her nose and lips. 

“I didn’t know you had freckles,” he says quietly and she sighs. 

“Mostly in the summer,” she tells him softly, humming slightly as he brushes hair away from her face with his hand. He doesn’t say anything again until he’s finished, tossing the wipe into the garbage bin to his left. He then takes the pins from her hair, carefully sliding each one from her dark curls and using a brush to slowly untangle. He says he has nieces and that lucky for her, he just started getting good at brushing hair without pulling too hard, pushing both sides behind her ears when he’s done. She brings a loose top and pants into the bathroom to change into and when she emerges, he’s pulled back the corner of her sheets and has placed a cup of water along with a pill on her bedside table. 

“For tomorrow if you don’t feel well,” he explains, gesturing to the medicine, and clearing his throat awkwardly as she crawls into bed. “Text me if you need anything, I know you have my number saved under a bunch of weird emojis in your phone,” he tells her and she nods, already snuggling into the soft plush of her pillows. 

“Thanks,” she says softly and he nods, a small smile gracing his face. He looks like he’s about to leave, one hand on the frame of her bedroom door when he falters and quietly walks over to her bedside to press the smallest kiss on her forehead. She closes her eyes at the contact, grabbing hold of his shirt before he leaves completely.

“You could stay,” she whispers impulsively as she looks up at him with wide doe eyes. She speaks so soft she can’t tell whether or not he’s heard her but he shakes his head gently, smoothing out her hair with one hand. 

“Night Tutu,” he says softly as he backs up towards the door, closing her light. If anyone asks, she positively, absolutely, definitely does not dream about him that night. 

*******

She wakes up the next day to Scott Moir laying across her couch, shirt halfway unbuttoned, a blanket halfway on the floor and one foot hanging off the edge. It explains a few things: the pill and water that magically appeared on her side table, the pile of hairpins on her bathroom counter and not in their proper spot. She’s sure that even in her drunken state she knows where hairpins are supposed to stay, and tries not to think about him taking her hair out. She nudges his side with her bare foot and his eyebrows scrunch together once before his eyes slowly blink open, squinting against the light coming in from the outside windows. 

“You’re awake,” he says casually, rubbing at the back of his neck like he didn’t spend the night in her apartment. 

“You’re on my couch,” she says back, suddenly self conscious of the fact that he’s seeing her like this, bare faced in her pajamas, “in my apartment.” 

“You let me in.” 

“Were we being chased by an axe murderer?” she questions. 

His hair is messy and still somehow styled well enough to be presentable. She thinks it’s unfair that his bed head looks so good effortlessly, when she’s sure the tangled top knot she gathered her hair into before she left her room is in comparison, atrocious. 

He considers her question for a second, tapping at his chin before replying, “No just a regular murderer, I didn’t see an axe,” he decides, sitting up. 

“Scott,” she pleads, rubbing at her eyes and sinking into her spine. She has a killer headache and her mouth tastes like chalk; in other words her patience levels for dealing with Scott Moir on this fine morning are very low. 

“We decided to ditch the party and come here, you were very drunk, you went to sleep without locking the front door and I felt weird about stealing your key to lock it from the outside. I couldn’t leave your apartment wide open all night,” he explains, running a hand through his messy-perfect hair. “Did you take that pill I left on your side table, you look like you have a headache.” He frowns, peering at her like he’s checking for symptoms. It’s only then that she notices a lipstick mark on the arm of his shirt and her mouth goes dry. She has a sudden vision of leaning into him and the smell of his skin and a wave of nausea rushes over her. Rumpled hair, shirt unbuttoned, lipstick stains. She doesn’t know how he would have ended up on her couch but that thought isn’t as troubling as her other one. She wants to punch herself. She didn’t—they wouldn’t. 

His eyebrows furrow when he notices what must be an expression of horror on her face and follows her line of sight until— “We didn’t do anything,” he says cautiously, “you leaned against me in the cab and it must have rubbed off,” he explains but she can’t get that flash of last night out of her head. 

She lets out a shaky breath. “Okay,” she says, nodding slowly as she brings her hands down from her face and counts to ten. There isn't company protocol for what to do when you find your aggravating coworker on your living room couch after a night out. One where he took you home and wore a shirt with your lipstick on it and left a pill and water on your side table and stayed over in your apartment so the door wouldn’t be left unlocked. If he says anything at all to anyone she thinks she might actually die. She doesn’t even know if people saw them leave together, what they might think. She’s sure they’re violating some company policy, even if they didn’t sleep together, or apparently do anything at all and already she’s seconds away from hopping onto her computer to write a letter of resignation out of embarrassment when he calls out to her. 

“Tess, hey T,” he says, voice worried, untangling himself from the blanket somewhat awkwardly and standing up to make himself level with her. She looks over his shoulder, at the ceiling, anywhere but his face, but he grabs ahold of both her hands and her eyes flit to his on instinct, her breath caught in her throat. He speaks like he’s trying to calm a scared animal. “It’s okay, everything’s fine,” he says in a gentle tone and she lets out a ragged breath. She tries to pull her hands away but he holds on, not forcibly restraining her but preventing her from sinking into herself. He shouldn’t know her like that, know how she shuts down before isolating but maybe being trapped together for so many years has taught them more about the other than she’d expected. 

“Go swallow the pill, take a shower, do whatever you need to. I’m going to wait out here and then we can talk,” he tells her slowly and calmly, brushing a wisp of hair back from her face and she nods as if her body is on autopilot, turning around and walking in a straight line towards her room, not looking back or breathing until her bedroom door is securely shut behind her. 

She stands, letting the water trickle over her for a while before she can gather the strength to wash her hair. She decides on taking a long shower before she remembers the man outside her bedroom door, worries she’s taking too long, and rushes conditioning, then washing her body. Afterwards she weaves her damp towel dried hair into a simple French braid and stares blankly at the mirror until she can’t stall any longer. 

When she collects the willpower to face him he’s at the stove shaking a pan with one hand with a pot of simmering water beside it and an open egg carton on the counter to his left. 

“Poached?” he questions from across the room and she just stares at him. He’s cooking on her stove with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and the top two buttons undone, the bottom of his shirt loose and untucked from his pants. 

He turns around to face her and she notices he has a dish towel thrown over one shoulder. “Poached?” he repeats, cocking his head, “That’s what you like right? You have them all the time for lunch so I just assumed,” he trails off, fiddling with the dial that controls the heat for the stove. “I can make something else too though, if you want,” he tells her and she walks slowly to the stools by the counter like she’s in a dream. 

She almost turns around and goes right back to bed because she’s sure none of it is remotely real, that her brain is playing in elaborate trick on her and she’s about to wake up. She pinches herself a few times to be sure and it’s only when he gives her an odd look that she realizes how crazy she must look. “Yes, poached. Thank you,” she says finally, coughing a bit to fill the awkward silence as she sits down. 

She watches him cook for a bit, observes as he cuts strawberries and butters toast. Her inner house hostess instincts tell her she’s being rude by simply sitting there as he makes them both breakfast but she’s so exhausted that she doesn’t think she’d be much help at all, add in the fact that she really can’t cook and it’s more trouble for her to be in the kitchen that not to be. 

“Why did we come here?” she strings together when he places a plate in front of her. The eggs are perfect, runny in the middle and he's arranged the strawberries in a way that makes them look like a blooming flower. 

“The plan was to alter the drawing a bit because we had a late night strike of inspiration but we…didn't actually end up doing any of that,” he says, only a bit awkwardly as he picks up a piece of scrambled egg on his fork and she suddenly decides she doesn’t want to know what else they could have been occupied with, stuffing her mouth with bread.

She gets up from the stool because she needs a second of distance from him to think but mostly to fetch syrup from the fridge. She hears a snort from behind her when she grabs hold of it and turns around to see him smiling down at his plate, very clearly trying not to laugh. 

“What?” she questions, raising her eyebrows at him but he just stabs another piece of egg with his fork and she ignores him in favour of drizzling syrup over her strawberries. 

She hears a fork clatter against ceramic and snaps her head up in surprise to see him looking at her wide-eyed with his hand still raised in the air from where he dropped the fork. 

He laughs loudly for a bit, brining both elbows onto the counter where he folds his hands together like he’s at a business meeting. “Oh wow,” he finally gets out, leaning forwards on his arms. She rolls her eyes at him and closes the lid on the syrup. 

“You’re insufferable,” she grumbles, already planning how she’s going to forcibly remove him from her apartment, but he just smiles at her. A megawatt smile that could melt the Arctic gleaming on his face. 

“You’re so odd Tutu, I have never met anyone who has deliberately gotten out syrup to eat with strawberries when there’s no reason for there to be syrup there in the first place. I get if you were having pancakes and syrup was already on the plate, but this is interesting.” he says grinning, plucking a strawberry off her plate and popping it into his mouth. He tilts his head and gives a half shrug. “It’s all sweet I guess.” 

She frowns at him but opens up again for some reason she can’t quite place. There must be something in the water, none of the entire morning has made any amount of sense. “My favourite dessert when I was younger used to be strawberries and whipped cream,” she informs him, “my mom would cut up strawberries and put them in a bowl and I would just cover the entire thing in whipped cream and eat it. It was the best dessert.” 

“Sweet tooth Tutu,” he says in a singsong voice and she rolls her eyes at him playfully. 

He looks sideways at her and she swears he seems nervous, “This isn’t too terrible is it?” He asks, chasing fruit around his plate and she considers his words for a bit. She isn’t sure whether he means the food, or them. 

Eating. 

Together.

On a Sunday morning in her apartment.

She decides neither of them are all that bad and shakes her lead lightly. It’s odd. The entire thing is odd, like the other shoe is about to drop and he’s only being civil, even _nice_ because he feels bad that she embarrassed herself beyond return last night.

“I mean, isn't this better than hating each other?” he asks cautiously and she stares down at her plate, fiddling nervously with her fork. 

“If I remember correctly from the past several years,” she notes, “you delight in making my day as horrible as humanly possible.” He frowns at that and it makes the space between his eyebrows crease. She doesn’t understand why he’s so upset; they’ve been loathing each other for the duration of the time they’ve known each other and he’s never shown any remorse before. 

“You’ve never liked me much either,” he tells her quietly and she supposes he's right. At every chance she’s gotten she’s made life just as hard for him. “Aren’t you tired?” he asks, and even his voice seems exhausted. “Imagine not having to throw dirty looks at me twenty times a day, that’s a lot of energy you could harness to use to do literally anything else. I feel like it would even be kind of nice to not hate the person you spend your entire workday with,” he says, and she could swear he sounds the slightest bit hopeful. 

She realizes just then as he looks at her that she holds all the cards. She could call him crazy and look at him like he’s grown an extra head and send them right back to square one. Hating is what they do best, it’s possibly the only part of their relationship that functions. She can already see the point totals in her head, the power she would hold in rejecting him. 

Tessa: infinity, unmeasurable

Scott: forever indebted to her

“It might be nice,” is what she comes up with. She has a mental image of them making friendship bracelets together in the office and she shudders. If he starts bringing in pastries and desserts to share during lunch, she’ll have to resign. “But don’t go soft on me Moir,” she warns, pointing her fork at him. “This is merely a truce. Détente, if you wish,” she informs him and he smiles. 

She likes his smiles more than she cares to admit.

“Détente…” he says, shaking his head, and for some odd reason it’s endearing, “I dropped out of French in the ninth grade,” he tells her but he’s smiling all the same. “A truce,” he settles on and he holds out his hand for her to either accept or receive. 

It’s almost comical how quickly she grabs ahold of him. 

********

Monday is a light blue shirt with dark blue pants type of day that ends with him picking up his bag, grabbing her coat from her coat hanger and raising his eyebrows at her. 

“I’m taking you grocery shopping,” he says calmly, leaning against the doorframe. Her computer hasn’t even finished fully logging off and she still hasn’t slipped back on the kitten heels she toed off midway through the day that sit under her desk in a pile. 

“Why?” she demands, shoving her feet into her shoes and standing up from her desk. She knows how to grocery shop. 

“Because when I came over you had three things in your fridge and from how adamant you were about me not stealing it, a bag of sugar in the cabinet,” he frowns, holding out her coat so that she can slip her arms into the holes. She does so and nervously looks out the glass windows that border their office. Some people look up from their desks in confusion as they pack up, others whisper amongst themselves, she thinks someone might be dialing HR from the anxious look on their face. 

“Stop that!” she whisper-shouts, twirling to face him. “We can’t leave together; people are already talking and it’s been one day!” she says, holding up a finger for emphasis. He has a barely concealed smile on his face and she looks away to spare herself. 

“I brought my car and everything, it’ll be fun. You can even ride in the cart,” he says evenly. She shakes her head at him, wondering what she’s getting into. She grabs her pair of gloves from her desk and stuffs one onto a hand, surrendering to his shopping trip and looking up to see him frowning at her. 

“What?” she asks blankly, widening her eyes in annoyance. 

“Your gloves are tiny,” he says, pursing his lips in thought, “Tiny hands Tutu.” 

She raises her hand up to her eyes, flips it a few times, “They are not!” she argues.

He walks over to her and places his palm flat against hers. “Yes they are, look how much bigger mine are,” he says proudly, smiling at her cheekily. His hands are a bit rough against hers, yet comfortingly warm, the tips of his fingers almost towering above hers. 

“Maybe you just have oversized hands,” she fires back, removing her hand from his hastily and sliding her glove on. She can feel her cheeks warm just slightly, disguises it by focusing intently on putting her glove on. 

“You know what big hands means,” he says casually with a hint of suggestion in his tone, scuffing the toe of his shoe into the ground. 

She stops what she is doing immediately, looking up and staring at him blankly. “If you finish that sentence I won’t hesitate to punch you,” she says very seriously, her eyebrows nearly in her hairline. 

“It means big gloves Tess, get your mind out of the gutter,” he says, chastising her with a grin on his face. 

She takes a deep breath and just barely stops herself from filing an HR complaint. She puts both hands on her hips, “If you have a car, why do you take the subway every day?” she questions, changing the topic quickly and retrieving her bag. She knocks the pad of sticky notes off his desk for good measure and he chuckles, opening the door and placing a hand on her lower back to guide her out. She jumps away from his hand, shooting him a dirty look and stares straight ahead as she makes her way to the elevators.

“Some people care about the environment, Tessa,” he says slowly and low into her ear and the feeling of his breath on her neck makes her shiver so she covers it up by pulling her coat tighter around herself. 

“Judging by the rate you use sticky notes I can’t find it in myself to believe you,” she says coolly, making a beeline for the exit. By the time she’s at the elevators he’s still barely across the room, talking to someone at their desk and laughing. When he looks over she raises her eyebrows at him and shrugs her shoulders messily and he says something once more to whoever he’s talking to before gesturing towards her, laughing once more, and walking over.

She presses the button and the doors open immediately, both of them walking in together. As they close, he waves once more at someone and smiles at someone else, before leaning against the back of the elevator and pulling his keys out of his front pocket. She stares directly at him for a few seconds before bringing a finger across her throat which makes him chuckle. 

“If you don’t have a minivan from 2004,” she says, glancing at his keys, “I’m going to be thoroughly disappointed,” she plays, smoothing out her coat. He grins and covers the logo on the handle of the key so she can’t see, putting both hands behind his back for good measure. 

When they get out of the elevator and walk through the parking garage to stop somewhere near the exit, she learns that he really doesn’t have a minivan from 2004 and instead drives a sleek white sports car with an all-black interior. 

“Okay seriously,” she says, looking at him with wide eyes, “if I had a car like this I wouldn’t be taking public transport,” but he only shrugs, walking around to her side to open the door before getting in himself. 

“Again, the environment Tessa, don’t you care about the turtles?” he asks, reaching over his shoulder to toss his bag into the back seats. He starts the car, placing a hand behind her headrest as he carefully backs out of his spot. 

She cocks her head to one side. “I thought saving the turtles was about not using straws,” she says. He shifts gears to drive, and they emerge from the underground parking garage before turning onto the main road. 

“Reducing carbon emissions helps everyone,” he says informatively, He glances over at her and raises his eyebrows once before bringing his attention back to the road. Sun glints off the windows of tall glass buildings as they drive, hard lines and soft curves bordering the streets. Toronto has always been her favourite place; falling in love with the city was easy as slipping into warm water. Effortless and persuasive, she’s always wanted to roam in busy streets and live in spaces that could endlessly inspire her. He flicks the radio on and immediately country music starts playing from the speakers. Some guy singing about a pickup truck and a hometown girl, shattering her image of her favourite city. She immediately sits up straighter In her chair, snapping her head towards him. 

“Oh no, absolutely not,” she says, flicking the radio back off and leaning back in her chair. He looks back at her with a look of mock offense on his face. Someone runs across the road up ahead and he slows down just the slightest bit. 

“Hey, driver picks the music,” he says, searching for the dial blindly but she covers it with her hand. She will not listen to anything that has to do with a tractor, she absolutely refuses. 

“Not if the driver has bad taste in music,” she informs him and he shakes his head. Someone across the street honks loudly like a steamboat horn and drives right through the middle of the intersection. He frowns and looks over at her seatbelt like he’s making sure it’s on before he presses on the gas again. 

“What do _you_ like listening to then?” He asks her as he looks past her to make a right turn. The angle he’s at makes his jaw more pronounced and she forgets how to speak in favour of staring at it for a bit. 

“Anything but this,” she moans once she collects herself, maybe a bit dramatically but it gets her point through.

If she was being honest, she would have said a few hours of silence. His presence all day in the office is deafeningly loud, his personality talking up an entire floor, that sometimes she feels the need to just sit and detox her entire mind for a while. She can see the enlarged sign of his chosen grocery store down the street and finds relief in the fact that now they don’t have to have an argument about music tastes. 

“Whatever,” he says, eyeing her with his nose scrunched up before finding an empty parking spot along the side of the road and pulling into it. 

By the time he’s paid for parking, she’s managed to grab her purse and swipe on another layer of lipstick. Soft burgundy today, to match the stitching on her blouse. 

They arrive at the sliding glass doors and she almost bangs into him when he suddenly stops in his tracks to point at an advertisement and laugh. 

“Tee, look,” he exclaims, she can hear the humour in his voice. “Sugar’s on sale.” He smiles, turning to face her and she pushes against him with both hands away from the sign and into the store where he continues to laugh as he walks at a leisurely pace. He retrieves a cart from the alcove along the side and pushes it to her, gesturing at the empty basket and patting it gently. 

“I’m not sitting in the cart,” she says, crossing her arms.

“It’s seven o'clock on a Tuesday, I promise you it’ll be mostly empty in there,” he says persuasively, raising one eyebrow and leaning forward on the handle of the cart. 

“Absolutely not,” she argues back. “I’m wearing a dress! There’s no good way to sit that isn’t illegal,” she informs him, frowning. He gives up reluctantly after she shoots him a glare. 

“You’re no fun, Virtue.” He pouts before pushing the cart past her and through the second set of doors into the store. 

She learns he’s a very particular grocery shopper. He checks every single piece of fruit twice for bruises or bumps and searches the entire carton of strawberries before buying them. She leans against the front of the cart and watches as he takes what feels like hours to decide between two peaches, the top button of his shirt undone and his sleeves wrinkled and rolled to around his elbows. 

He picks up vegetables and fresh bread and pasta and his self proclaimed superior type of rice, jasmine, and throws it all into the cart. Somewhere around the half hour mark, when he had been nowhere near done, her feet had gotten sore from the heels and she’d reluctantly climbed into the basket of the shopping cart with some help from him, sitting with her knees crossed and a family size bag of pasta over her lap for good measure. She’d scowled at him as he laughed so hard he was fully bent over, pink colouring her cheeks as she insisted it was his idea first but he had only tucked a bit of hair behind one of her ears before continuing to push the cart. 

It occurs to her in the dairy aisle that although she is the soon to be owner of many groceries she doesn’t actually know what to do with any of them. 

“Scott,” she calls from inside the cart as he peers at different types of cheese. He turns to face her with a large triangle of Asiago in one hand. “That’s a lot of cheese—” she says, distracted before getting back to her original point, “It’s great that we’ve got all this food but I really can’t cook much,” she tells him, moving a can of olives away from her knee. 

He puts the huge triangle of cheese back down and picks up a smaller one, “You’ll learn eventually. Most of its snack food, an apple on the way out the door you know? But I’ll cook tonight.” 

She looks up from the cans she’s rearranging and raises her eyebrows. “Um,” she stammers, “I don’t know if—”

“I cooked for you yesterday morning,” he notes and she fiddles with a button on her coat. 

“I didn’t really have a choice there, you just…. did it,” she says, “that’s a completely different situation.” 

“Think of it as cooking lessons if it makes you feel better.” 

“It doesn’t.” 

“Come on,” he pleads. “I promise it’ll be fun, I’ll even let you stir the pot,” he smiles and she rolls her eyes. She’s been craving good food all day, something homemade and not takeout. Partway through eating the prepackaged Greek salad she bought at lunch she considered calling her mom and inviting herself over for dinner.

“Fine,” she sighs, succumbing to his charm and his smile brightens to almost blinding. 

While stirring a skillet of olive oil, garlic, a tablespoon of red sauce, and chopped black olives, she thinks she’s beginning to get the hang of cooking. None of it has burned or seared her wrist, or hopelessly failed, and in her head it’s a milestone that should be celebrated. She even considers throwing the pie in the back of her freezer into the oven as a gold medal stand-in. 

“I can see you getting too confident,” he chuckles as he salts the pot of boiling water, “you’re only holding the spoon with one hand and there’s no vise-grip on the handle.” 

There’s a peace lily he bought her sitting in the middle of her dining table because he saw it on their way out of the store and thought it was fitting for the situation. _Get it Tee? Peace lily? It’ll help us keep the peace!_ To which she begrudgingly added it to the cart and threatened him with sending in an HR complaint if he dared to tease her about its ability to keep it alive. She also has old music she thinks you would hear on a phonograph playing because it’s the only thing they could agree on and most of the lights dimmed with the sunset setting golden spots on her tiles from the large windows. She finds that he’s actually very into Billie Holiday and Patsy Cline even if he won’t admit it.

“Turns out cooking is my calling,” she tells him, sprinkling red pepper flakes into the pan successfully and he snaps his fingers like they’re at a poetry reading. 

“Very impressive,” he says with exaggeration, pulling two plates from her cabinet and grabbing cutlery from the drawer. She impulsively pulls down the wine glasses and sets them on the counter, turning to see his raised eyebrows and amused expression. 

“Getting fancy are we Virtue?” he teases and she shrugs. She’s not passing up the sporadic opportunity of wine with good homemade food.

Its when he’s poured the oil sauce over the pasta and filled their glasses and Ella Fitzgerald is playing low on her speakers that she realizes she’s actually having a good time with him. Something she wouldn’t have expected of herself three days ago, even a mere five hours ago if she’s completely honest. 

Somehow conversation flows easily, maybe because she isn’t scared to offend him or seem awkward. She spends her entire day stuck in the same room as him. They’ve pushed each other to the breaking point, so really, there's nothing either of them could say that would derail the night. 

Finishing off her glass of wine, she thinks she might not hate Scott Moir as much as she thought she did. He bought her food and cooked and was tolerable for most if not all of the day. She fills her glass again and he politely shakes his head in response to her offering to fill his. She assumes that maybe he isn’t a wine drinker and offers a beer that he gladly accepts, which only triggers a barely hidden snort on her part. He’s too predictable in too many ways. 

He tells her about his brothers and how good his mom's home-cooked food is and how he spent years thinking he was going to play hockey professionally and somehow ended up an architect. He says the math is his favourite part, eyes flashing with amusement when she raises her eyebrows and takes a long drink from her glass. 

He tells her seriously he’d like to have a firm of his own one day, somewhere with a nicer coffee machine and dozens of archways. He even suggests they co-own it and somehow the story of _Virtue&Moir’s_ becomes a solid tangible thing see could see herself being a part of. She doesn’t know how it happens but suddenly it’s 12:40 a.m. and his arm is draped on the couch behind her and her toes are tucked between two of the cushions and she thinks he might even not hate her back. There’s an old rerun playing low on the TV and every once in a while it breaks through their syrupy conservation. She feels her cheeks turning pink and she knows that she’s definitely laughed too hard at a few of the things he’s said. 

If there was a points tally for the night she wouldn’t be able to tell which side was winning, maybe they’d both be at zero, a blank slate and a brand new set of rules. 

Tessa: 0  
Scott: 0 

She really isn’t sure how it happens but before she can register the fact that they’ve progressively moved closer to each other throughout the evening, her knees that she’s tucked up are touching his side. He’s too warm and oddly charming and she thinks she might understand why so many people like him so much. Even if they aren’t office favourites she can tell her coworkers much prefer him and she’s never been able to place why, not until the moment they seem to be stuck in. She thinks if she could just get closer, maybe steal some of his charm and charisma that she wouldn’t feel so lonely. 

If she could touch him properly then maybe it would flow right into her, maybe it would stick on her fingers like glitter and stay stuck forever. It wouldn’t be hard, the space between them is so small and it gets smaller still when he leans in a bit further. 

“Tessa, we can’t,” he says, his lips nearly touching hers when the words come out and her eyes snap open. She pulls away from him and touches her fingers to her mouth with a hand that feels like it’s not fully attached to her. In the back of her mind she gets a feeling almost like déjà vu. 

Tessa: -9000000  
Scott: 0

She gets up to flee only to sit back down again once she realizes that she’s in her own apartment and can’t exactly leave. He looks nervously at her, with some expression she can’t place on his face and she feels like throwing up. She’s definitely going to have to resign now, she won’t be able to face him in the office. 

He must sense her panic building because he gets up quickly from the couch and straightens the cuffs of his shirt, shifting awkwardly on his feet.

“I’ll go,” he says, coughing once and gesturing towards the door. She nods slowly while staring at the carpet, wishing she could sink into the plush and disappear. She barely notices the sounds of him putting on his shoes or the door closing or the coffee pot running a self-clean cycle. She doesn’t even know how long she sits there chastising herself. The only thing she figures out after hours of thinking with her head in her hands is that she has to stop letting Scott Moir walk into her apartment. 

**********

She walks into their office the next day and notices the fact that all the blinds are pulled shut, which does not help in her quest to avoid looking at him, but she manages to make it through most of the day without even acknowledging the fact that he's seated directly across from her. Though she can still sense him sneaking glances at her every once in a while and frowning like there’s something bothering him. Probably the fact that his coworker invited him inside her apartment and tried to kiss him. 

She passes the time by thinking of European countries she could dramatically run off to and start a small but successful business in and before she knows it, there’s ten minutes left of her daily prison sentence left and her entire body is lit red hot with the need to get out. She can barely stop her knee jiggling or the way her finger keeps tapping absentmindedly on the desk. It’s like she can’t handle all the built up energy and stress from the day any longer, the four walls have never been more claustrophobic. With four minutes to go there’s a chant in her head that’s yelling at her to go that’s interrupted by her own name being called. 

“Tessa,” he says from his side of the room, standing up cautiously. “I need to tell you something,” he blurts out, and she’s never been more afraid. She’s on the precipice; at the top of the tallest tower and the ground is so very far. He’s saying these words and she has nowhere to go, the door is just as far away as the ground and there’s a handrail called the clock on the wall keeping her trapped where his words still reach.

He glances at the door nervously, his lower lip caught between his teeth before locking eyes with her. 

“I think about you way too much,” he says, breathless, like he’s watching her teeter on the edge. 

She doesn’t know she’s been moving until the backs of her knees hit the side of her desk. She clutches it like a lifeline. 

“So,” he carries on, stepping towards her, “If we do this, one of us has to be prepared to quit because there’s absolutely no way I’ll be able to stay shut up in this office all day with you without going crazy.” 

She can barely breathe, her chest feels like it’s being held tightly together with rubber bands and she can hear her heartbeat pounding. She hasn’t been with anyone in a while, she thinks being stuck with him 24/7 might be affecting her sense of reason. He walks around until he’s on her side of the desk. 

“Okay?” he asks, his eyes searching hers and she notices he’s nearly pressed right against her, his hands braced on the wood of the desk behind her. She’s never been more grateful for floor-to-ceiling blinds, if anyone walked in they’d be severely reprimanded. 

It’s thrilling.

She thinks the exhilaration of it all might be the reason she does what she does next. 

“Okay,” she says quietly as she reaches up to capture his lips with hers. He must be in shock because for a second it’s all her but then he kisses back almost immediately, all fire and passion. She thinks she can feel her lipstick smearing; dark red, she only then realizes he’s been staring at her lips all day. Some part of her can’t help but be mad, she was up all night thinking of him and how embarrassed she was and how he’d tease her. He couldn’t have just told her while they were at her apartment? 

“I hate you,” she mumbles into his mouth, running a hand through his hair. She loves that it’s begun to grow out a bit again. She loves the colour shirt he’s wearing, dark charcoal grey that hugs his back and shoulders. 

“I don’t,” he says between kisses.

She pulls back just far enough to glare at him, “You can’t ever agree with me on anything, can you?” 

He smiles back, wickedly. “I think the world would end if I did.” 

She reaches for him again and he meets her halfway. The reasonable part of her is a drumbeat telling her to stop, to act how she’s supposed to, but there’s a string of pure steel pulling her closer to him. He’s addicting, the taste of him, and the feel of him and the way his hands touch her. She wonders why she’s waited so long, she hates herself for it.

“This is very against the rules,” he blurts out and she can’t help but roll her eyes, before leaning in to kiss him again. He’s the worst kind of rule follower. 

“It’s fine.” 

“You’re terrible.” 

“You’re revolting.” 

“Good to know,” he chuckles against her, brushing a thumb over her cheekbone before pulling away from her. He’s panting and so is she, and he’s got crazy eyes that she’s sure mirror her own. There’s no way that what they were doing wouldn’t be incredibly obvious to any outsider. “But really we really shouldn’t be— especially in the office,” he stammers, running a hand through his hair. 

“It’s not a big deal, it’s nothing serious,” she reasons reaching up to kiss him again but he pulls away.

“Well, I’m serious,” he says and he seems a little put-out as he searches her eyes, “we can’t do _this_ again—_ I _can’t—not until we figure it all out.” 

“No one's going to know, it’s probably just all the time stuffed in here, I’m sure we’ll be back to normal in a week” she lies, playing with the buttons on his shirt coyly and he grabs both her hands in his and traps them behind her back. She wants to keep her hands stuck on him forever. Her mouth tastes heavy like it’s filled with sage, and her feet feel cemented to the floor, it’s like touching him has rendered her useless, she feels like she has to squint to look at him properly. 

“It’s against company policy,” he frowns, “and as senior partners we shouldn’t be breaking it like that, especially not for an office fling.” He looks like an agitated bird, all twitchy and nervous, she could swear he’s holding his breath. 

“Fine,” she huffs, wrestling her hands from his grip, “no office shenanigans but apartments are safe zones, anything goes, just so we can get it out of our systems,” she breathes, her voice catching in the middle. 

He presses his lips together until they’re no more than a fine line and stays like that for several molasses-filled seconds. “Fine,” is what he settles on, “but inside this office we’re colleagues only.” 

Someone from the main floor opens the door, Alicia from HR, and sticks her head past the door. Both of them spring apart from each other and busy themselves with their desks. She picks up a stack of papers and pretends to flip through them and he adjusts his computer monitor with one hand while the other sits strained against his thigh. 

Alicia has made it clear that their office disagreements have aged her beyond her years. There’s a special box outside her door just for their complaints about each other, and she has suggested they move their workspaces away from each other multiple times. For some reason, that requested gets denied every time by their actual, ever the optimist, boss, Anna.

She looks around disappointed as if they’ve both personally wronged her before addressing Tessa directly. “About that complaint you put in the other week Tessa, I don’t think I can justify ‘emotionally distressing pen clutter’ as a real issue—” Alicia begins, using finger quotations to emphasize and showing signs of being very clearly tired but Tessa cuts in quickly. 

“It’s fine!” she says weakly, splaying her hands in front of her and Alicia blinks twice before shaking her head. 

“You’re positive?”

“Yes.” 

Alicia scribbles something out on the clipboard in front of her before leaning on one hip. “Just ...next time just resolve it yourself if you can. Please,” she tacks on, exiting their office with a sigh, and Tessa slouches against the desk. 

She hears quiet laughter beside her and turns to see Scott chucking, his eyes beaming. “Emotionally distressing pen clutter?” He asks her with raised eyebrows. She weakly shrugs her shoulders as she picks up her bag. 

“You leave pens everywhere!” she exclaims, feeling the need to explain herself, her cheeks burning as she throws her arms out to her sides. “They’re all over my desk and none of them match the ones I bought for myself, it _is_ emotionally distressing!” 

He leaves his desk and walks over to plant a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll work on it, Tee,” he tells her before walking towards the door. “See you tomorrow,” he says and winks before the lock clicks in place behind him. She doesn’t realize she’s standing perfectly straight until she breathes out for the first time after he leaves, touches the place he kissed her softly and leans against her desk. It’s in that moment with the ghost of his kiss still on her lips that she thinks they might both be the most stupid people on earth, rubs at the corners of her eyes tiredly before letting her hand fall. 

Tessa: bright pink cheeks and messy hair, approximately 100 000 points 

Scott: 100 001 points

********

Scott becomes an odd constant in her life, more so than before, because now their relationship isn’t founded on a strong hate. He’s not physically there and somehow he’s still the first thing in her mind, which she supposes was how it was before, except back then her time was spent imagining all the ways he could get very publicly fired in front of her eyes. She spends her time instead thinking of his hands and lips and his hair that he’s let grow out just enough that her fingers easily sweep through it and the ease he touches her with. 

He brings her coffee regularly and picks up a chocolate scone from the bakery across the street too if he has time in the morning. He even picks her up voluntarily in his car most days and drives her home and won’t listen to her saying it’s too much trouble for him to go through. He claims it’s on his way anyways and that by driving with him she’s saving time and money, which she can’t argue against. 

He’s also been progressively getting closer to the line they’ve drawn in terms of their office persona while still managing to be platonic. She thinks it’s ridiculous considering how adamant he was about them following company policy. He might lean over her shoulder to check a form and be close enough that she can feel his breath on her neck or tuck hair behind her ear, or kiss her cheek before he leaves the room. He takes every chance to get as close to her as possible while still seeming indifferent to her to everyone else. If she said it didn’t make her breath catch in her throat she would be lying. She reminds herself it’s just a fling though, that he won’t belong to her forever, and takes a deep breath. 

*******

Even weeks later, she walks the main floor with a feeling like she's carrying a badly kept secret, like it’s written on her forehead in permanent marker and very blatantly obvious to anyone who looks her way for more than a second. They’re not dating though and it’s just something to rid them of whatever weird, tension-filled battlefield they've turned the office into. She wears shirts buttoned up to her throat just to hide the blush that spreads across her chest too many times a day. And she understands what he was talking about now; being too close to him, having him halfway, is turning her crazy and filling her head with cotton balls. It’s like hate but intensified, but it’s not dating, singularly focused on his lips and his hands. She almost feels lucky she’s so busy; she’s sure she would explode if left to her own thoughts. 

“Virtue,” he calls with a mug in each hand, walking into the office and she nearly jumps off her chair, knocking her keyboard off the desk in the process. The peace lily she’s since moved to their office wobbles a bit in its dish. She’s a tight spool of thread wound to the snapping point, she hasn’t breathed properly since whatever they are now began. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, concerned, setting a mug onto her desk and craning his neck to look at her. She forces herself to take a breath before leaning down to retrieve the keyboard, searching blindly on the ground with her hand. Grabbing a hold of it, she hauls it up, setting it back where it’s supposed to be and smoothing out imaginary wrinkles on her skirt. He watches all of it with a perplexed expression on his face. 

“Wow,” is all he says, glancing out the glass windows at the road down below, “Listen, I was thinking we could do something, watch a movie at my place—” he pauses when he sees her eyes widen and backtracks immediately “—or not?” he corrects, recovering gracefully. He asks her out too often now and it’s still not dating. She doesn’t want to date Scott Moir, she _can’t_ date Scott Moir. 

“No that sounds good,” she reassures, taking hold of the mug of coffee he brought her and taking a sip to hide her blush. “How do you know what to put in here?” she asks, looking up at him. Somehow he knows her coffee order perfectly.

“Two cream, three sugar,” he says shrugging slightly. “I’ve seen you do it only about a million times. Four sugars sometimes, those are fun days,” he teases and she sighs. He takes his coffee black, straight from the Keurig and steaming as he walks back to their office with levels of efficiency that should be documented and observed. 

“So my place? I can drive you, brought the car today, I’ll even cook again.”

“You don’t have to,” she chastises. “That’s too much.”

“Not it it’s for you… I mean, you’re impressed by me using a microwave,” he mumbles touching a leaf on the lily he bought her and she nods, a smile on her lips, holding her breath like he might change his mind and flip the switch. She’s missed his hands and his lips but they’re not dating. He’s not hers to have.

“Glad you’ve been keeping it alive,” he says coyly, gesturing to the plant and she shrugs her shoulders in a way that attempts to say she’s been taking excellent care of it when in fact she can’t remember the last time it’s been watered and is as amazed as he is that it’s still alive. 

“Dinner tonight, then.” He smiles, blindingly and she nods back, watching as he walks backwards to his chair and lowers himself down onto it. It’s not a date, they’re not dating. A voice chants it in her head like a gong ringing out, reverberating on the inside of her skull. She tells herself it’s nothing serious no less than twelve times a day. He looks at her over the top of his monitor, only his eyes peeking out, and winks at her, the lines at the sides of his eyes giving away the smile on his face. She wants to soak up in the warmth of all his smiles; she’s never really had them directed at her. She’s seen them though, of course, at coworkers or clients but never for her specifically, never because of anything she’s done. She thinks his smiles could power the country and almost feels guilty for a second, like she’s depriving the rest of the world from them. 

She steals a glance at him once more before buckling down and working. Anything he can do, she can do fifteen minutes faster. 

********

His apartment is the polar opposite to hers. 

Dark walls and picture frames are a constant, and every single surface is covered in something that must be connected to his family in one way. There are photos of him and his mother and cards from holidays and scribbled crayon drawings stuck to the fridge. She touches everything, the tops of the chairs and blankets and kitchen sink. There’s a hall leading to what she assumes is his bedroom that she doesn’t even let herself think about. In the back of her mind is a little voice that says that maybe it would be better for her sanity if that one room remained a mystery for even a week longer. 

Next to the television is a bookcase full of sports memorabilia, baseballs and hockey cards and caps; it’s his office shrunk into eight clean shelves. His dining table is a big slab of oak with plush chairs that have the most unique legs she’s ever seen. She wouldn’t expect anything less from an architect. 

“Where’s the all scary stuff? The dungeon?” she asks, rubbing her hand along a velvet pillow. “It’s suspiciously nice here.” 

“You know we’re on the top floor of a building?” he asks, sitting down on the cushy dark couch and she scrunches her nose at him. 

“I never know with you,” she replies, sinking down beside him and picking at her cuticles nervously. She doesn’t know what to do with herself. He pulls her hands apart and keeps one of them clasped in his. 

“Are you nervous?” he asks with very real concern and she snaps her eyes to his. 

“No! I’m—” she defends, stumbling, her cheeks warming and he searches her eyes before dropping his own to their hands clasped together.

“You do that when you’re nervous or scared or stressed, and it’s ruining your fingers,” he mumbles, lightly massaging the back of her hand with his thumb. He notices one of her cuticles bleeding slightly and frowns. “It's just my apartment, nothing weird. Okay?” He asks. She nods, letting out a breath and he drops a kiss to the top of her head. 

He makes salmon with asparagus cooked in some sort of garlic lemon butter sauce and she devours the entire thing in minutes, smiling when he pretends not to notice her stealing a piece of asparagus off his plate. Afterwards they end up watching the cooking channel after she gasped with glee as it popped up while he was flicking through channels. The fact that she enjoys it so much amuses him to no end and quickly turns into them placing bets on contestants and results. When her choice gets eliminated and he cackles with glee she has to restrain herself from throwing a decorative pillow at his head and resorts to kissing him full on the mouth to shut him up instead. 

He lets her kiss him through the whole main course challenge and she only comes up for air when they start on dessert. After that she stays pressed against his side with his arm draped on the couch behind her, her chin tucked into chest. He offers her a blanket at one point but her suspicion that he runs hot is proved when she’s tangled up in him and perfectly warm. 

He makes small comments, on colours and flavours and things he wouldn’t eat even if he was paid to, in soft tones and every once in a while his lips brush against her ear and she feels a spike of electricity go through her body. He takes her hair out when she tugs tiredly at the tight chignon it was wrapped into all day and gets her water just in case she hasn’t had a drink all day. She thinks that maybe they should have been doing it all years ago, that she spent so much wasted time not knowing how lovely he feels when he’s tucked into her front pocket. She might like it more than she cares to admit. 

He looks so relaxed and gentle that for a moment she forgets she’s spent so many days in that office wishing the floor would fall out under him. It’s just been instinct to hate everything he was, because he stood in the way of her dream, her success. He had natural talent with numbers and shapes that she worked so hard on to set herself equal, it seemed so unfair at the time. 

He breaks her train of thought with an offer of ice cream that she accepts with enthusiasm and shares with him in a deep, dark cyan coloured bowl. She shares the spoon with him because she figures she’s already done the equivalent of share saliva and afterwards he kisses the chocolate off her lips, asks if she tastes that sweet all over. 

Even though it’s well past midnight she can’t help feeling like there’s so much more time left in the night. That surely it can’t be over already. But he drives her home in his car and he waves goodbye at her door with a kiss to her cheek and another smile. She’s not dating him though, it wasn’t a date, she doesn’t feel that way about him. 

She thinks later that maybe, if they had done something more than enjoy the others company and make out on the couch like teenagers, it would be easier to convince herself she hadn’t felt anything at all. 

********

She calls him on the phone after sitting at her kitchen counter for a few minutes because she’s utterly hopeless, pressing his contact name — full of the most repulsive looking emojis she could find at the time — before she chickens out. She just wants to hear his voice, then she’ll pull herself together. She shakes her head and rubs at her eyes, she must really be going crazy if Scott Moir's voice is now a comfort to her. She’s spent years turning it out to the point that she could have an entire conversation with him without actually hearing anything he’s said. Her fight or flight response is activated automatically anytime anything comes out of his mouth. It rings one, twice, three times before she hears a click and his voice is jarring through her phones speakers compared to the silence of her kitchen. 

“Hello?” he asks, his tone confused, static sparking in the back. She bites the inside of her cheek. She’s so incredibly stupid. 

“Hi,” she breathes, pausing for a few seconds before swallowing and thinking of something to say. “I just wanted to make sure you got home safely,” she says in an even, business casual tone. He’s said one word to her and her hands are already turning sweaty. 

“Tessa, I just dropped you off maybe three minutes ago, I’m still driving,” he says and she can hear the smile in his voice. She hates him so much. 

“Oh,” she says dumbly and the line goes quiet for a bit. “Well, text me when you get home,” she mumbles, holding the phone awkwardly and internally cringing. “Late night traffic is dangerous, drunk drivers and stuff, you know,” she rambles, trailing off when she can’t come up with anything else. 

“I promise I will,” he replies evenly and she holds her breath, “Bye Tess,” he says cheekily. 

“Yeah,” she breathes and punches the end call button with her thumb before she has the chance to say anything else. 

The fact that she’s not going to survive whatever this is, is something that she’s sure of. One week in and Scott Moir has managed to turn her into a nervous wreck. She drags herself to her room, throws her phone into the bed and peels off her skirt and blouse, tossing them both into the hamper and rubbing her eyes tiredly. She hops into the shower quickly because she can’t stand the idea of getting into clean sheets unshowered and by the time she emerges in a cloud of steam there’s a text message from Scott displayed on her phone screen. 

It’s simple, just the word _home_ with a typed out smiley face made out of a semicolon and a parenthesis instead of the emoji one but she smiles anyways, and then falls backwards onto the bed with a groan. She’s not making it out of this alive. 

********

She visits his apartment often after that. Maybe more often than they go to hers, just because of the fact that his kitchen is always stocked and full of whatever she could be craving. 

She even finds pride in the fact that she doesn’t even check for trap doors or secret rooms after a few weeks. 

She also thinks it’s safe to say that his bedroom becomes a lot less of a mystery. 

******

In the back of her mind, after another morning spent with him, she begins to think that maybe getting used to waking up with him is going to ruin her later. 

*******

Design development is the final bit of negotiating they have to get through before locking in the project. In a way, it makes it seem more real when they’re shaking hands with an official and the next thing they know it’s all beginning to come together. 

It’s also the time she spends sitting in a room with bleach-white walls listening to someone drone on about different types of wood for the visible supports and how each enhances the feel and aesthetic of the building. Choosing between doors and light fixtures and appliances for hours could turn any person crazy. Talking about each one for an extensive amount of time and double and triple checking each choice might be the most tedious work she’s ever been involved in. By the time each selection is set it stone her jaw hurts from talking and Scott’s hair has turned into a slight mess from running his hand through it so often. 

She scribbles a note on the corner of a piece of paper while the client representative checks through documents with a pen stuck between his teeth. He’s a lanky sort of thing with thinning orange hair and thick tortoiseshell glasses, with a patterned shirt. 

_‘I liked the solid ebony doors better.’_

Do you know how expensive those are?’

_‘The city is paying for it, are you telling me that they can't afford a nice wood door?’ _She replies back with, adding lines around for emphasis, and he smiles shrugging. 

_‘I like the green colour you chose for a lot of the fixtures though,’_ she writes out, messily bumping him in the side with her elbow. He tenses up when he reads what she’s said but plays it off as rolling his shoulders. 

His hand hovers over the paper for a few seconds, his head cocked to the side as he chews on his lower lip _‘A Moir favourite’_ he ends up with, elbowing her back. She kicks his foot lightly with her own. 

The representative straightens the papers by using the table to line them all up, and the sound of the paper hitting the glass pulls their attention back to him. They both sit up straighter, putting a pleasant face on and he lays the folder down on the desk before smiling at both of them in return 

“Thank you so much,” he says, shaking both of their hands, “I’ll be in contact in the future but don’t hesitate to call.” 

“It was great to meet you,” she says, standing up and Scott nods, standing up as well and grabbing her coat off of the chair behind her.

“If I may, I’m just curious on how long you’ve been working together?” the man says in a questioning voice, walking with them to the door. 

She looks at Scott before responding and he’s got a barely hidden smile on his face, prompting her to smile herself. “We’ve been at the same firm for quite a while, and we do have our own office together but this is our first joint project,” she answers in an informative voice and the man raises his eyebrows.

“Really?” he says, and he sounds surprised. “Your working connection is very strong, always on the same page with your ideas. My wife would fight me on every little detail,” he chuckles, hitting the elevator button for them and holding the door with his arm. Scott raises his eyebrows at her, his eyes wide and the man looks between them in confusion. 

“Oh,” she responds, wondering why the man's wife was relevant to the conversation, and why Scott seemed so appalled by it. Maybe they had a company together that didn’t work out. “Well sometimes differing opinions are good too,” she says with a grin and the man nods his head in agreeance, looking relieved as she walks into the elevator, Scott’s hand just brushing her lower back, before he hits the button for ground level with a knuckle.

“Yes, I suppose they are,” the man says, waving them goodbye as the doors shut in front of them. 

It’s only when they’re out the front doors of the building and walking towards his car in the crisp Toronto air that she decides to voice what had confused her earlier. “What was that face you made when he brought up his wife, do you think something happened between them?” She asks, turning to see he’s holding her coat out for her and moving to slide her arms into each of the holes. She shrugs it onto her shoulders and turns to face him as she does up the buttons, furrowing her eyebrows at the laughter he’s holding back. 

“T, the guy clearly thought we were a couple.” He laughs, checking his watch for the time and she feels her face start to heat. 

“What,” She says shocked, “Why?” 

“Probably the note passing.” He grins, kicking at a crack in the sidewalk as they walk. “Very middle school of us.” 

“Oh—” she begins, her mouth dry. “So we—,” she mutters awkwardly, not being able to find the words and choosing to fiddle with her cuffs instead. 

“Yep,” he says nodding and cutting in so she doesn’t have to finish, “I thought you would’ve said something, but you didn’t, so I didn’t either,” he shrugs and she lets out a breath. 

She pinches the pressure point on her nose, “Scott, lying to clients is bad,” she stresses, “What if they say something to our boss? Who could very well fire us for that,” she reminds him, but he rubs a hand on her back reassuringly. She isn’t even that upset about the lying factor if she’s being honest with herself, she can’t live in this imaginary world where they’re together though. 

“Hey, if that happens we can just say it was a misunderstanding, I’ll make something up. But really he looked so happy for us, it’s probably better for business,” he shrugs, smiling at her boyishly and she tucks her hair behind her ears, taking a deep breath before nodding.

“Okay fine, but honesty from here on out,” she says. She needs it more than anything, because if the lines start to get blurred, she won’t be able to pass off whatever feelings she’s had as nothing anymore. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, waving a hand, walking to open the door on her side of the car. “We’re done for the day but do you want to go for ice cream or something, a design development treat?” he suggests, but she shakes her head smiling weakly. 

“Could you just drop me off at home?” she asks quietly. “Not feeling very well,” she lies, “I’ve been feeling a bit sick since lunch, maybe something I ate,” she adds in awkwardly for good measure. She needs to be alone for a bit so she can sort out every thought running through her head. He tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, his face concerned as he scans her eyes, which does not help the actual issue. 

“Do you want me to take you to the walk-in clinic?” he asks nervously, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead lightly and cupping her cheek, “It’s no fuss, I can take care of you.” 

“No,” she says, shaking her head a bit and moving away from his hand, guilt making her avoid his eyes, “that won’t be any fun Scott, I promise you don’t want to do that, plus I don’t want to put you through that trouble.” 

“It’s not to me. Not if it’s you,” he says seriously, searching both her eyes. 

The breath feels like it rushes out of her lungs, races out of her like water rapids falling over the edge of a cliff. 

“I think I just need to lie down,” she says weakly, taking a breath and he nods slowly, looking at her with concern before starting the car and merging into traffic. 

When they get to her apartment he walks her all the way up to her floor and helps her into bed even though she reassures him multiple times that she’s fine and it’s probably just a stomach bug. He also repeatedly tells her that he can stay if she needs him and she only manages to get him to leave with the promise that she won’t hesitate to call if she needs anything. When he does leave it’s apprehensively and she has to check the hallway to make sure he’s actually gone, listening for the sound of his car leaving the parking lot before she pulls a popsicle from the freezer and eats it miserably at one of the counter stools. 

She calls in sick the next day for the first time in years, and in one way it’s admitting defeat, but she can’t find it in herself to paste on a smile for the day, and they don’t have any important meetings set up anyways. She texts him to let him know and he replies with a typed out sad face and a _“feel better soon!”_, offering to visit her during lunch or after work but she tells him that she’d rather be alone for now. 

Later that afternoon, when she’s in sweatpants and a tank, watching the cooking channel on low volume alone, she gets a knock on the door for a delivery of peonies wrapped in cellophane with an envelope attached. She opens it at her kitchen table to find a bright yellow card with a message that says:_ “Hope you feel better soon Tutu, the office is boring without you,” _in his lopsided writing with a funny looking stick figure cartoon with messy hair holding a bouquet of flowers, and a scribbled-in heart. 

She places the card upright on one of the bare surfaces that serves as a cabinet for the fine china her grandmother gave to her when she turned eighteen. She surveys the room and it’s the only thing out of place, sticking up awkwardly on the polished surface like an eyesore, yet she can’t make herself get rid of it. 

She tears her eyes away from the card and chops the stems off each flower at a forty five degree angle with shaking hands, puts the store provided powder into the vase full of water and arranges each flower inside carefully. After she’s done she sweeps the cutoffs into the garbage and wipes the counter down until it’s shining, placing the flowers in the middle of her dining table so that it’s perfectly lined up with the overhead chandelier. She can smell them even when she closes her eyes. 

Then she stands in the middle of her apartment, looks at the bright neon card on her pristine cabinet and the peonies on her spotless dining table and hastily wipes away the tears that have streaked down her cheeks with the ball of her hand. 

Tessa: fresh peonies and a handwritten card from the one person that makes it all that much harder 

Scott: her heart 

******

When she walks into the office the next morning she tells him she’s “feeling much better, and thank you for the flowers,” and he smiles brighter than any star she’s ever seen. 

******

She invites him to lunch one day and immediately regrets it afterwards. She’s been on edge all day, every clack of his keyboard like a ringing in her ears. She might just be frustrated, she’s spent the week trying to figure out exactly what’s happening between the two of them and has come up with nothing. She hates that it makes her feel unsettled and off-balance, like she has all these new feelings about him she can’t control. She can’t even figure out what flipped the switch, except for him maybe gaining advantage over her in some way. He’s always said that one day he would be her boss, and the idea has always sat uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach. She would quit before she let that happen. 

She left for lunch in the first place because she’s felt so claustrophobic in the office lately with the shades all drawn. If they could keep them open without getting sent to their bosses office for questioning they would, but since that isn’t an option, they stay down. The plan was to get a bit of fresh air but when he asked her what her lunch plans were she had no choice but to tell him.

He arrives three minutes late, barely making it through the door before a gust of wind slams it shut behind him. Even the weather seems agitated with him today. 

“The builders want us to come by a couple of weeks into construction,” she says in a calculated tone as he sits down. She was seven minutes early because even now she has the inescapable need to be places before him, and because it’s always been instilled in her that if you’re not early you’re late. “I got an email last night, they like having lots of contact with their designers which is good,” she shrugs, closing the lid of her laptop, sliding it into her bag, and plucking off a piece of the banana bread she bought. 

He reaches across the table and breaks off a piece from the corner of the slice, popping it into his mouth and shrugging. She blinks once at him, staring at her plate for a beat, and rolls her shoulders back before speaking, barely hiding the annoyance in her voice. 

“I was going to buy you something but I wasn’t sure what you wanted, you’re so weird with sweet things, I never know what you’re in the mood for.” She says, breaking off another piece of the banana bread and handing it to him. If he’s going to take her food he may as well just have the rest of it. 

“How sweet,” he says, smiling at the joke he made and prompting her to roll her eyes. 

“And I know you’ve been using my computer when I leave the room, stop doing that,” she says flatly, placing an elbow on the table and resting her chin on it. 

“I know you don’t send me certain things,” he frowns, mirroring her as he rests his chin in his own hand. 

“May I remind you of the many times you've tried to sabotage me,” she says calmly and he sighs. 

He takes a deep breath before responding. “Tessa, I’m not going to mess with the project we share together, I’m in this as much as you are,” he reminds her and she scrunches her nose. 

“Glad to know you restrain yourself due to the fact that you’d have to deal with the outcome too,” she says, eyes locked onto the hazel of his own. 

“When have I ever tried to mess up your work?” he asks, eyebrows furrowing together and she raises her hands in the air. 

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” she replies easily. 

“Hey, I thought we were past this stuff,” he says, leaning back in his chair a genuine look of distaste on her face but it’s like all the tension she’s been holding in all day is just bursting out of her, escaping every box she’s tucked it away into. 

“Why? Because we’re—” she falters, her words caught in her throat, she swallows and continues, already hating herself for the things that are about to come out of her mouth. “None of that will matter once we’re done this project, you can go back to your side of the room and start ruining my day again like you used to, I’m sure being nice to me has been a real burden for the past while,” she says and immediately regrets it. Her heart beats so loudly in her chest that it’s impossible he doesn’t hear it. 

When he speaks it’s with a tone of voice she’s never heard before. He almost looks hurt, like she had just slapped him, “Whatever, Tessa,” he mumbles and shakes his head, standing up from the table. “See you at the office.”

She sits there in shock for a few seconds before gathering her things and returning the plate to the front, nearly running out the door of the cafe and onto the sidewalk. She looks in both directions before she spots him halfway through a crosswalk, the red blinking hand indicating for her to stay off the road. She shifts her weight between her feet for a few seconds before half-walking, half-running down the crosswalk, her bag hitting her thigh as she chases after him. When she finally catches up they’re both on the other side of the road, the front door to their building only a few steps away. she knows that If she doesn’t fix it now they’ll be stuck for the rest of the day so she grabs his hand in hopes that he’ll stop walking so quickly away from her. 

“Hey,” she gets out and he’s looked at her this way before but seeing such a look of distaste on his face as he turns to face her almost knocks her sideways after being treated to so many of his smiles. 

“I’ve got to get back,” he says, avoiding her eyes and gesturing to their building, shaking his hand out of her grasp. Her hair whips around her and the traffic lights creak as the sway in the wind. 

“Look, I’m sorry,” she chokes out, looking up at him and his jaw is clenched as he focuses on something in the distance, she could swear his eyes look a bit glassy and she swallows before she speaks again. “I've just had an off day, I didn’t mean it,” she pleads, her voice loud over the noise of the wind and he looks down at the concrete, scuffing the toe of his shoe into a crack in the sidewalk before meeting her eyes. 

He brings his eyes up to hers and he doesn’t look angry as much as sad and she can feel a knot in her throat that prevents her from saying anything else. “Is that— is that what you really think of me?” he says so quietly she can barely hear him. “That I’m just some terrible guy who’s tolerating you because now whatever I do comes back on me or because we have a—“ he falters and she notices he has the same problem defining whatever’s happening between them that she does, “—a _‘thing’_ going on?” he chokes out and she shakes her head hastily. 

“No, no, I didn’t mean any of that,” she says her words coming out scratchy, she can feel her eyes burning and mentally curses herself. She can never get through things like this without crying. It’s like she has a switch that goes from nothing to everything all at once. She swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand and looks at his chest instead of his eyes. “I’m sorry for what I said, I’m just scared, I don’t know what all this is, I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel” she admits shakily, throwing her arms down at her sides and she watches as his chest rises and falls, counts to ten before raising her eyes to his. 

When she does she finds nothing but understanding there and she has to work to keep her emotions in check. “I get it T, believe me, but you can’t go all defensive on me like that. It’s like we take one step forward and you set us back another two,” he says sadly, taking her hand. Her eyes flip automatically to their building which is no further than a stone’s throw away from where they are. There would be no way to explain any of this away if anyone saw. 

“It just feels like— so much,” she says, quietly, feeling the familiar weight of his hand. For some reason her hands always feel so empty when his aren’t twined into them. 

“I know,” he breathes, tracing her line of vision towards the building. “Believe me I know, and if I’m being honest,” he says, “I really don’t care about anyone in there right now,” he admits. She snaps hers back to his and when she does there’s the smallest smile on his face. 

“Can we just agree that if nothing more— that we’re at least still friends when this is all over?” she says, her breath caught in her throat, the word friends is sticky and tasteless in her mouth, and nowhere near what she wants deep down but it’s the best she can hope for and to her relief he nods. 

“It would be an honour to be friends with you, Tessa Jane. I’ll take whatever you give me, whatever that may be,” he says, searching her eyes and she nods, letting out a sigh and maybe it means more. Maybe it’s why he smiles for real. The wind dies down and she can’t help but feel that his smile is partly responsible.

********

She thought it would be awkward between them after that, but it seems as if they jump back into their old routine effortlessly. He brings two coffees into their office everyday accompanied by wide eyes from everyone outside and more than one case of someone lingering outside their door. 

They smile, say they’ve been trying to put aside their differences for the sake of the project, which only works on half the building. The rest seems to have a running bet for when all their playing nice will end. 

She’s been invited to lunch by coworkers more than she ever was before. The gossip central of the front reception desk all ask her carefully worded questions that all link back to him. She answers them in sweet tones, both hands wrapped around a cup of coffee and her ankles crossed under the table. Reinforcing the idea that they’re merely adults trying to resolve their differences only to be met with blank smiles in return. Half the time she feels like she’s being interviewed for a column in a magazine. Soon enough they leave her alone and she can spend lunch wherever she pleases without prodding questions. 

*******

“Have you started on the drawings for the concrete contractor?” she asks once she’s finished applying a layer of rose coloured lipstick, peering over the top of her monitor at him. His eyes are glassy and unfocused as they stare at the screen. 

They’re in the construction documents phase which is the longest chunk of work they have to get through. Since the city already has a contractor in mind, bidding won’t be necessary and only short meetings will need to take place. They finalize all the design and engineering concepts and make sure plumbing, electrical and gas among other things is accounted for before they start creating drawings for each work type that’s going into the construction of the building. 

“What?” he asks in response, sitting up straight in his chair and rubbing at his eyes. 

“I was wondering if you’ve started on the drawings for the concrete contractor? You always do those first. I figure if we split them up into a list then each do half we’re less likely to get all mixed up.” she says, already ripping a piece of paper out of a notebook. 

“I’ve been just reviewing things and triple checking but yeah, sounds good,” he says, clicking five times on something. 

She ignores the habit he has yet to break and starts to scribble down a list for each of them. 

“Please don’t give me electrical though, I really won’t be able to make it,” he pleads and she rolls her eyes before scribbling it off his side of the list and adding it to her own. 

“Fine, but you’re getting ventilation systems,” she says and he sighs before nodding. 

“Almost there,” she says reassuringly and he smiles tiredly. They’ve both been putting in the time to make it perfect. In a way it’s become something more than just a building project. 

“Almost there,” he repeats hopefully, getting up from his chair and walking around to her side of the desk. 

He leans down to kiss her on the cheek and she blushes, biting her lip to hide the smile blooming on her face that mirrors the peace lily sitting on the corner of her desk. 

“You’re such a flirt,” she says, laughing, and pushing him off her, “go do something useful, work on the drawings,” she jokes and he shakes his head, and sighs dramatically, falling back into his seat like a dead weight. 

“You’re ridiculous,” she says, leaning over the side of her monitor to look at him. She rips the piece of paper she wrote to divide their respective responsibilities in two and hands him his half which he accepts with a groan. 

“Dramatic,” she says, in reference to his complaining. 

“I’m actually just upset about how you’ve wasted a sheet of paper when you could’ve messaged it to me digitally,” he plays, shaking his head in mock sadness. 

“Hey, I’ll make dinner tonight,” she says, ignoring his prior comment and he makes a sour face at her which prompts her to roll her eyes at him. 

“It’s collateral for giving you the extra drawing, and you cook all the time so I figure it’s my turn,” she says defensively. “It’ll be lovely, bring a nice shirt.” 

“I can see that,” he frowns, referencing his list which is a line longer than hers, “but plumbing isn’t the worst,” he shrugs, then directs his full attention to her. “I’m ecstatic to eat what you prepare,” he says with a smile and she sticks her tongue out at him before getting back to her work. 

She doesn’t let him drive her home that night because she’s determined to go to the grocery store herself and pick out the right ingredients without his help. She finds a recipe online for _“5 Star Gourmet Mushroom Risotto”_ and figures from all the comments below the article raving about how easy and good it was that she can manage it on her own. 

Standing in front of the wall of various types of broth feels daunting but after ten minutes she figures a generic brand is her best bet and adds it to her cart. She spends maybe more time than she ever has in a grocery store and feels oddly proud of herself when she makes it to the register. A cart full of ample amounts of Arborio rice, mushrooms, chicken broth, sea salt, olive oil, chives, fresh Parmesan cheese, and butter, as well as both red and white wine and a case of beer later she’s feeling pretty confident. 

Her confidence increases while chopping the mushrooms and cooking them in a saucepan on medium high heat in two tablespoons of oil until soft like the recipe said. She even feels confident adding the rice to a skillet and cooking it in oil until lightly golden. Adding half a cup of chicken broth each little while seems laughably easy and she’s more than ready to boast when he comes at the time she set. 

She has the ingenious idea to chill the white wine and beer in the fridge so that by the time he arrives it’s good and cold so she leaves the risotto to cook on the stove, giving it one last stir before setting the spoon on a paper towel and fitting the drinks into the fridge. She then sets the table with a nice table cloth and her special occasion dishes and places the silverware on the correct side of the plate with the wine glasses on the left. 

When she returns to the risotto it’s simmering and she happily stirs it only to realize it’s all stuck to the pan, and as hard as she scrapes at it with the spoon she can’t get it to seperate from the bottom. 

Tessa: -9999999999

Scott: bragging rights for the rest of his life 

In a panic, with her bottom lip between her teeth, she calls Scott, sounding slightly hysterical at the state of her risotto and he promises to drive over as fast as he can and that she should just keep stirring until he can get there. 

When she opens the door he’s standing with a pressed men’s shirt on a hanger in one hand and wearing a plain black t shirt that hugs every bit of definition in his arms and chest. To his credit, he only pokes fun at her for a bit before moving the rice to another pan and salvaging the amount that’s left before adding the mushrooms, butter, chives and Parmesan. She watches it all from behind the counter like she’s afraid it might jump out at her. 

When the food has been salvaged and her heartbeat has started to slow back down to a normal rate he out-of-the-blue decides it's an appropriate time to take his shirt off right in the middle of her kitchen, because according to whatever logic he’s been following all his life, the kitchen is the best room to get changed in. She thinks it should be noted that for someone who seemed so intimidating and harcore for so many years, he doesn't even have any tattoos to boost his image. She decides to ask him about it right then and there because apparently all her house hostess manners have left her since the scarring risotto experience. 

“Why don't you have any tattoos?” she vocalizes from her spot on the stool, her chin rested on her hands and definitely-not-but-maybe staring at him as he stands shirtless in her kitchen. 

He looks weirdly at her for a second before moving to retrieve his dress shirt from one of her dining room chairs. 

“It's like that Kim Kadashion quote,” he begins, which already, astounds her because she honestly didn't think he knew who Kim Kardashian was, let alone had one of her quotes ready at his disposal. “You know, you don't put a bumper sticker on a bentley.” he says with an exaggerated tone of voice as he does up the buttons on his shirt.

When he looks up after he’s finished buttoning up his shirt she’s nowhere to be seen.

Soon enough they’re sitting at her dining table eating the risotto that to her credit, turned out pretty good for the circumstances, and drinking their alcohol of choice as they stare at each other over the rims of their glasses while the sun sets and lets golden light in through the big windows at the back of her apartment. 

One thing leads to another and then they’re on her couch and she’s kissing him silly, giggling in between and getting handfuls of hair stuck between her fingers. It might be getting a bit long, she can twine the curls at the nape of his neck into soft loops, but she likes it too much to say anything. 

Her hands travel all over him and she thinks he might be a geographic masterpiece, the valleys in the hollow of his shoulders and the peaks of his cheekbones. Glacial striations marked by the veins in his forearms and the trenches by his collarbones and clavicle. She would map him out if she could, record every elevation and depression on paper. Plug it into the computer and turn it into code, she would build structures resembling the way his hip bones feel against her hands. She supposes she has to make do with just touching him, feeling him and the silk of his skin. She blooms with him, a million different colours like a kaleidoscope, stained glass windows breaking above her head.

He stays over in her bed and the dishes stay uncleaned in the sink because she’s drunk off the feeling of him and the ceramic of the plates they ate off of is so cold compared to the warmth coming from his body. He sets an alarm for the next morning so that they have time to stop by his place to get a clean shirt for the office and she passes out with one of her bare legs twined around his. 

*********

She begins to notice he leaves their office for significant enough periods of time often, much too often to not be suspicious. 

Sometimes for more than a few hours, each second ticking by on the clock until his return where he enters looking more tired than he was when he left. 

She tries to coax it out of him, brings it up over dinner when they’re both at home or on the couch but he kisses the words out of her mouth, swipes a hand feather light over her hip bone and she can’t find it in herself to care where he’s leaving to after that. 

The strangest day was the one their boss’s assistant came into the room asking only for him. Naturally she had figured they were being called into a progress meeting, they’re common at this point in the project, nothing too new. She had been halfway out of her seat when she’d realized her name hadn’t been called. She’d shot him a confused glance and he had winked at her reassuringly before making his way out their door. She had spent the hour he was gone worrying a pen between her pointer finger and her thumb, tearing her cuticles to shreds and making a list on a pad of paper of what he could be in there for. In the end she had gone for an inquiring but casual look as he walked back into their office with two mugs and circles under his eyes. 

He’d stopped any of her questions in their tracks with a kiss on the top of her head as he deposited the mug in front of her. Said it was just a review of his information because the computers had been acting up lately. She’d stayed silent at the time, kept working on drawings with deadlines, but if she’s learned one thing from spending years sitting across from him it’s being able to recognize when he’s lying. 

*********

She stands with her arms crossed beside him, looking at the site for their project. The beginnings of a building are starting to take form, the shape emerging out of steel reinforcements and beams. She loves this part of the job, loves slowly watching her ideas translate into a real tangible thing. It’s just like the run-up to Christmas when she was a kid, with the exception of much more stress on her part now.

She can feel the heels of her shoes sinking into the soft dirt ground and attempts to release them by lifting her feet slowly. 

“You look like a dork,” he remarks, flicking her bright yellow construction helmet and grinning at her. 

“You’re wearing the exact same thing,” she fires back, poking him in the chest and he sticks his tongue out at her before gasping like he’s had a revelation. 

“Well that’s embarrassing, I can’t believe we showed up wearing the same outfit.” He grins, gesturing at his orange and yellow vest and then pointing to hers and she rolls her eyes as she pushes the bulky safety glasses higher on her nose. 

As much as she likes her eyes being intact, she hates the safety glasses with a passion. They leave an indent on the bridge of her nose, are always covered in scrapes, and for some reason they make her feel inexplicably claustrophobic. She’s wearing the vest though, and the hat, but she made the executive decision to ditch steel-toed boots in favour of pumps — something he had clicked his tongue and shaken his head at in mock disappointment. 

She stares blankly at him for a minute and he stares right back, “Scott, it’s a safety thing, they’re not outfits,” she deadpans, flicking a piece of dirt off her neon vest and he sighs, resigned. 

“You’re no fun, do you have any joy in your life?” he questions, pushing up her glasses that have fallen down again. She feels like she needs a smaller size, or a piece of elastic around the back to keep them up. 

“You ruined that for me many years ago,” she replies easily and he chuckles before turning back to the worksite. Some part of her is proud every time she makes him laugh, a warmth spreading all throughout her body and settling in her cheeks and chest. She could live off that’s warmth, it could keep her more than satisfied in the winter. 

“When I get my own firm, I’ll get only the most high quality safety gear, fashion-friendly vests and work boots with red bottoms, real luxury,” he tells her with a grin, elbowing her lightly in the ribs. She never thought he was really that into owning his own business; it’s never been something they’d seriously talked about. Not like they used to talk in a civil way to each other anyway. 

She laughs awkwardly, squinting up at him through the bright sunlight, “I didn’t know you were serious about that, I thought all the firm stuff was just wine talk.” 

His eyes brighten a bit when he begins to explain, “Well, I mean it’s the dream,” he laughs, toeing the ground, “having your own business, shaping things your way. It would be hard but I’d be up for the challenge.” He shrugs. 

She considers his words for a moment. She’s never imagined owning her own place, the security of their firm has always been so comforting, the routine and the order something she easily adapted to. Sitting in a different office where he’s not across from her with a sour look on his face seems foreign, too strange to even dream of. She tries to imagine sitting in that office alone and a weird feeling overtakes her body. None of his sarcastic comments or mouse clicks or even blinding smiles. She can feel something heavy rising in the pit of her stomach and settling in her throat, just thinking about any of it makes her uneasy. Maybe she was naive to think he’d climbed the ladder as far as he’d wanted. Maybe the thought of everything changing so drastically is just that frightening to her, she’s never been good with change.

When she speaks again her words come out strained, “You’d leave me all alone?” she chokes out weakly, forcing a smile to her face and she watches as the brightness in his eyes dims. It’s a switch going from ten to two. 

“I mean, you’d be leaving a good stable job Tess,” he reasons, and she could swear he sounds a bit sad too. “It’s a bit of a risky idea, I wouldn’t want you to get dragged into a mess if it didn’t work out,” he says quietly, brushing the back of her hand with his own in a way she guesses he must assume is comforting. She grabs his hand tightly instead, links their fingers together a little bit behind them so their blatant connection isn’t so obvious. 

“It would be weird without you,” she blurts out, her cheeks warming. She can feel her palms begin to get sweaty. He’s brought up the smallest idea of leaving and she’s acting like he’s booked a one way flight to the other side of the world and left a resignation note. 

“You’d have the entire office to yourself, you could take down all the posters I’ve put up that I know you hate, you’d be okay, trust me,” he says, squeezing her hand once in what he thinks must be an encouraging way. It might be because she feels lightheaded, but his voice almost sounds like he’s convincing himself too. She feels her mouth becoming dry and tasteless, he’s not getting it. He doesn’t understand. 

“I’d miss you,” she croaks, staring down at the dirt ground beneath her shoes. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her, she’s supposed to hate him, she _does_ hate him. He rubs his thumb against the side of her hand and she swallows, taking a breath before stringing together a sentence of words. “It wouldn’t be the same without you,” she whispers, barely audible over the noise of construction coming from the building. 

“I mean—” he begins a bit awkwardly, scratching at the back of his neck, “—there’s always a spot for you if you want it, I was serious about _Virtue&Moir_,” he says gently, smiling down hopefully at her, “we deliver class and convenience as well as some riveting office drama. Maybe we could get TMZ to cover it, give us our own show and everything,” 

“My name first?” she asks cautiously, and he looks a bit embarrassed, running a hand down the back of his neck and shrugging. 

“I mean—” he starts, looking at the sky, “it just sounds better— _Virtue&Moir’s versus Moir&Virtue’s_ you know?” He smiles shyly at her and she feels her breath catch in her throat. 

“You fought for an entire _week_ to have your name above mine on the door,” she says, smiling, poking him in the side, and he grins bashfully. 

“That was before,” he reminds her pointedly, craning his neck to see something going on with the construction. 

“Before?” 

“Before I knew you could stand me for more than five minutes,” he says, looking down at her through glasses specked with scratches and spots. She thinks that might be the problem, that she can more than stand him.

“Do you—” he begins, stumbling a bit over his words, “—hypothetically, do you think starting something like that together would be something you would want?” he asks quietly, staring straight at the ground. 

“Maybe,” she breathes, her chest feeling like it’s stuffed with cotton balls. 

“Yeah?” he asks, sounding a bit hopeful.

“I don’t know,” she shakes her head, frazzled. “I think we work well together,” she says softly, looking up at him. 

He smiles down at her his bottom lip caught between his teeth, “You do?” He asks quietly, 

She mumbles something incoherent and only realizes then that their hands are still linked. He seems to realize at the same time and squeezes her hand once before dropping it and turning to greet someone walking towards them with a clipboard in hand. 

*******

“Hey,” she says, watching him walk through their door an hour late one morning, his hair obviously swept and tousled by the wind.

“Hey back,” he replies, placing his bag on the top of his desk and pulling out a stack of papers and pamphlets only to grab a manila folder from his desk drawer, tuck them in, and put them into the bottom drawer of his desk that he keeps always locked. 

“Where were you?” she asks casually, hitting a key on her keyboard every once in a while in an attempt to look bored. 

“The dentist,” 

“Your dentist provides some pretty heavy reading material.” 

He avoids her eyes as he fiddles with a strap on his bag, “He knows I’m up for the challenge.” It’s odd because both of them know there’s nothing truthful happening at all and somehow she feels more alienated from him than she’s ever been. 

He makes a gentle _oh_ sound like he’s just remembered something and opens the front pocket of his bag only to produce a chocolate chip cookie from the bakery across the street which she gladly accepts. 

“I’m going to figure this out,” she says though a mouthful of cookie, eating carefully to avoid ruining her painted red lips and he raises his eyebrows at her. 

“If you want to know about my dental health so bad I’ll tell you.”

In lieu of breaking into his locked desk drawer, she decides to drop the issue for the time being.

********

She’s woken up by the jarring sound of her phone ringing, and is half convinced she’s not completely awake when she holds it up to see the familiar set of the ugliest looking emojis she could find at the time. 

She squints against the light of the screen and presses the answer button. “Scott?” she questions, still half asleep. She can’t for the life of her figure out why he would be calling at two in the morning. 

“Hey,” he greets, excitement in his voice.

“Do you um—” she yawns, “—do you need something?”

“I’m outside your apartment,” she hears him say through the phone, his giddiness evident. 

“Scott— what? It’s almost two in the morning,” she says. She’s confused and tired, but then she’s pushing her covers away and getting up from the bed. She drags her feet to the window and sees him standing on the sidewalk fully dressed, his eyes brightening when he spots her. The streetlight is shining yellow gold light all over him and his car is parked on the side of the road and for a second she still thinks she’s dreaming. She opens the window and sticks her upper half out, raising her eyebrows at him. 

“Please come down, I was going to throw stones so it would be like in the movies but your apartment building is way too tall,” he admits boyishly, a smile in his voice and she sighs knowing there’s nothing she can do to go back to sleep now. 

“Five minutes and I’ll be down,” she says, not believing that this is something that’s happening to her and he grins up at her from the ground. 

“Dress warm, I’ll be waiting Virtch,” he smiles, sliding a hand into his left pocket and she ducks out of the window, locking it before throwing on a thick sweater and jeans and worn but comfortable shoes. On the ride down the elevator she checks the time on her phone once again, sees that it’s still two in the morning and decides that this is really the moment she knows she’s gone crazy. 

“What are you doing here?” she questions, rubbing at one eye. He gracefully avoids answering her question by grabbing ahold of her hand and leading her to his car. 

“It’s a surprise,” he says, grinning as he opens the door for her and closes it softly once she’s in before jogging to his side of the car. 

“Oh great.” She sighs, attempting to seem disinterested to hide her curiosity, buckling herself in as the car starts and turning the radio on low. 

He drives and the streetlights all blur together, a mix of red and green and yellow and swirling lights from neon signs. People walking and laughing on the streets even in the late hour, new lovers’ teeth glinting in the light as they cling to each other. Shes seen pictures of the city from above and it’s always looked to her like a chain of glowing veins, like a living person breathing with the sway of the trees and the dancers in the streets. She misses home though sometimes, where the streets were nearly bare after twelve and she could sit by the oak tree in her backyard and be in near total silence. Sometimes the noise here is deafening though, car speakers with the bass nearly blown out running red lights like it’s a game. She’s never liked driving in the city. 

Time passes but she doesn’t really notice until she realizes she’s just been staring at his face in the glow of the dashboard for too long to be normal. He pulls into a parking space by a park and thumbs a few dollars into the meter before grabbing her hand and leading her down one of the trails. They pass a playground with worn wood benches and springy dark red flooring and walk over a small bridge bordered by flowers with the sound of running water flowing beneath them. Eventually they come to a clearing with a few spare trees dotted like the freckles on the back of her hand and he pulls a blanket out of the tote she hasn’t registered he’d been carrying. 

“What are we doing?” she asks, confused when he lays it on the grass and fiddles with it until it rests flat. 

He lays down on the blanket and pats the space beside him. “Humour me,” is all he gives up and she sighs as she lowers herself down beside him.

Stars twinkle above them and they’re so far deep into the trees that the only light from the city is fleeting. She can feel the moisture in the air from the lake that must be nearby though, can almost smell the fried dough she used to buy at the pier and the roses they sell wrapped in tissue paper and cellophane. She would have an entire garden if she could, If every live plant she bought didn’t die, but she thinks if she can keep the one she currently has alive then maybe anything is possible. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, turning to look at her but she keeps her eyes trained on the sky. 

“How you thought I wouldn’t be able to keep the lily alive but it’s currently very alive on my desk as we speak,” she says confidently. She feels awfully smug about it, like she's finally bested him after all these years. 

Tessa: declared the winner  
Scott: 2nd place for all eternity

“Tee,” he says calmly. 

“What?” 

“I’ve been watering that plant for weeks, how did you think it managed to stay alive?”

“You’re kidding!” she exclaims, sitting up, staring at him with wide eyes and he laughs a bit from his place on the ground.

“Plants need water, Tessa,” he explains to her, giggling and she puts her head into her hands and moans.

“I thought I was doing so well,” she groans, dropping her hands into her lap. He sits up suddenly to pull her hands into his own. They feel like security, like holding matching paperweights in her palms.

“From the way I caught you talking to it the other day I’m sure it felt very loved,” he says seriously, the twitching of his lips betraying his consoling facade. 

“You saw that!” she exclaims, feeling her cheeks warm and the next thing she knows she’s laughing, watching him as he laughs back, his eyes brighter than every star in the sky. She laughs a bit too hard, maybe because he’s funny and maybe because she might love him. It would explain the fluttering feeling in her chest and the way he’s almost blinding, hard to look at like the sun on a hot day. 

He stops laughing and she sees his eyes flick upwards before he looks up completely, tilting her chin with one of his fingers to where his eyes have drifted. She catches the tail end of something streaking through the sky and gasps softly.

She turns to face him and he looks at her shyly. “You brought me to see a meteor shower?” she breathes.

“I saw one last year by accident, I think I heard on the news that another one was coming up and I thought you’d like it,” he says, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly and she leans forwards to kiss him lightly. Soft as the ground beneath them, and so tender she almost doesn’t believe it’s him. 

Another drop of light races through the sky and she smiles at him, meets him halfway as he leans towards her, falls with him into the blanket with both hands on his cheeks. He kisses her slow like molasses, like the clock in their office and the gel in his pens. Like the elevator they ride and the way he reads every document twice. She kisses him until her lips feel technicolour, until she could map out the contours of his face based on pure memory. 

Then she lays wrapped in his arms as ribbons of light chase each other across the dark expanse above them. Until she feels so comfortable and warm that she has to tell him to make sure she doesn’t fall asleep lest the bears both get them and he laughs and promises her he’ll get them both home safely. He explains constellations to her and when she tells him she doesn’t recognize any of what he’s saying he tells her that he made all of it up and he doesn’t know one thing about the stars other than the fact that they're all made of the same stuff. The stars and them. Carbon, nitrogen and oxygen all packaged up perfectly with bows and name tags. He says he’s so grateful that the stars decided to make her. 

Afterwards, he begins to drive her home but neither of them really want to be apart anyways so they both end up at her place and she brushes her teeth again because she can’t sleep without tasting mint in her mouth. With the clock flashing 4 a.m., tucked under her covers with her thumb resting in his clavicle and his lips a hair away from touching her temple she thinks she might really love him. 

No.

She knows she loves him, maybe because she always has. 

If she could whisper it into the darkness and have it escape into the open window above her bed she would, if only to get it off the tip of her tongue. Her mouth had felt heavy for weeks and she’d had no idea why. It makes sense that he’s the reason. 

********

Breakfast the next morning feels almost intolerable. Sitting on the kitchen counter as he cooks pancakes with a towel thrown over one shoulder nearly sends her over the edge multiple times. It truly is a testament to her ability to remain composed that she doesn’t burst into flames on the spot. 

He feels suffocating, and she swears she can feel pressure pushing down on her from every angle, but she thinks it might just be in her head. The card he gave her is on the cabinet and the warmth of his sweater surrounds her, the bottom hem just hitting the middle of her thighs. Even her heart feels like it’s beating louder than normal, reverberating and bouncing off the walls of her apartment. Maybe the music playing tinny and soft from his phone speaker is loud enough. She suspects he put it on just to make the thumping sound coming from her chest less obvious. Maybe that’s all in her head too. 

He turns around to face her and it’s a summer's day. Like happiness and security and paradise all in one. Clean sheets that smell like citrus and the sun hitting her skin with rays of golden light. He’d taken a shower in her bathroom that morning and used her expensive soap. The vanilla scent coming off his body intoxicating. 

He’s speaking in dulcet tones to her, like candy drops that dissolve on your tongue and leave something sweet there to be remembered. Placing a plate in front of her with his sunshine smile and tousled hair. She braces both her hands on the sun warmed granite of her counter and pushes herself off her chair to catch his lips in a kiss. Gentle and soft and controlled and unstable all at once.

She’s always thought it’s better to hate someone you can’t have than dare to love them. Love is imperfect and dangerous. You give up a piece of yourself to love. She would almost rather still hate him because hate doesn’t waver or stray. It’s constant, a reaction you feel in the pit of your stomach, a hummingbird's wings moving at rapid speed. These days she thinks they’re not that different, love and hate, that maybe they’re the exact same thing. She’s been emotionally attached to him for years, maybe her heart has always beat this loudly around him. 

“Are they good?” he asks, stabbing a piece of dough with his fork. 

She shakes herself out of her head, attempting for words only to have her breath caught in her throat. If she speaks it will spill out of her, fill every open space in the room until neither of them can breathe. She keeps her mouth shut at nods giving him a thumbs up and a watery smile. 

“Good,” he says, pleased, catching her eyes with his. Soft brown meeting hard green. He reaches over to wipe a bit of syrup from the corner or her lip, his rough thumb grazing over the smooth skin as he focuses his attention to the corner of her mouth. There’s a misfit part of her hiding in the back of her head that wants him to lick it off his thumb, watch his throat as he swallows but he wipes it off on the dishcloth beside him and turns his attention back to his own plate. She considers doing it herself, swiping syrup with the pad of her finger and holding it out but neither of them would leave her place after that and he’d promised his mother he would drop by.

She comes to the conclusion that it might be the worst thing he’s ever done to her; make her fall in love with him because he’s trapped her, torn down anything she’s ever had over him. He’s made her do the one thing she’s not supposed to do because now she’s stuck. She thinks about how hard she’s worked to get where she is. Her treetop office with glass walls and her seething nemesis in the corner. The tubes of lipstick in her drawer and the three-piece sticky note set on her desk. She loves him, maybe more than she has anyone else in a long time, maybe more than she’s ever hated him. 

The only problem is the simple fact that she can’t.

The workplace rule that seems to be a neon sign flashing over his head, it’s blinding, coating her eyes with spots of distorted colour. In spite of herself she imagines all the places they could have met instead, in a coffee shop, on a train, at the bar she’d spent too many unsuccessful nights at. She can’t love him and maybe she’s getting ahead of herself because she doesn’t even know if he loves her back. She hopes he does though, even if it’s wrong because maybe hearing he doesn’t would be worse than not having him in the first place. It’s all so complicated and she’s never been one for simple but she thinks she would take simple with him any day. 

So she makes a simple decision in her head right there, with his morning smile and faded t shirt and gentle voice less than an arm's reach away. 

After the project ends she needs to let him go, needs to separate every bit of him she’s latched onto, every bit of light she’s stolen from the pockets of his jeans in the past weeks. It’s her only saving grace, her only solution because she can’t love him, maybe she was never meant to. 

She slides off the stool, making her way to his side of the counter, shivering as his hands come to hold her waist. 

“Are you cold?” He frowns, searching her eyes with concern. She shakes her head, keeping his brown locked into her green. 

“No,” she breathes, taking a deep breath before pressing her lips to his, feeling his thumbs dig into her soft skin and breathing in through her mouth sharply when he lifts her swiftly onto the counter, their lips never parting. 

She figures she might as well make good use of the time she has left. 

********

Her sister Jordan surprises her with fresh flowers and chocolate strawberries, thankfully on the morning she had decided to spend alone in her own bed. Not that she doesn’t love being wrapped in his warmth, some nights are just better spent in the company of a bubble bath and a book. 

Jordan makes her way into her apartment in a whirlwind as she always does, throwing her heavy bag onto the chairs by her counter and immediately sweeping her younger sister into a crushing hug that’s met with equal enthusiasm. The fact that it takes her nearly an hour to spot the card on the top of the cabinet is a marvel in itself as her sister had always been too observant for her own good. 

“Scott?” she questions, holding up the card with one hand as Tessa cuts the cellophane around the flowers to put them in a proper vase. “Isn’t he the guy who works with you? The one who’s terrible to you? Why is he sending you a card?” 

She looks up confused before seeing what Jordan has in her hand. “Oh yeah, I was sick,” she says casually, avoiding her sister’s eyes. 

“And he sent you a card? What is the drawing of, I thought you guys were architects? Aren’t you good at drawing?” she says, squinting and bringing the card closer to her face. 

“That’s him holding flowers,” Tessa says weakly, feeling a bit dizzy as she chops the ends of the flowers’ stems. 

“He brought you flowers?” her sister asks, shocked. 

“I was sick,” she repeats, tucking her hair behind her ear before filling the empty vase with water and adding in the floral powder. 

“But you told me he’s such a jerk to you? I don’t get this,” her sister admits, turning over the card in her hands a few times and raising her eyebrows. 

Tessa stumbles with words for a second before sighing. “It’s complicated,” she says quietly at last, rubbing the back of her neck and counting every speck in the granite countertop. 

“Okay,” her sister says, shooting her a knowing look and Tessa blushes, hiding her cheeks behind the flower arrangement. She tries to look as innocent and unbothered as possible but somehow she knows she isn’t being the slightest bit convincing. Luckily her sister drops the issue. 

“Mom wants to know when you’re coming home again,” Jordan says out of the blue after a few seconds of silence. Tessa takes one deep breath, turning away and wondering how the conversation had turned on its head so quickly; she thought the worst was over. 

“I’m really busy Jo, I don’t just get time off, things can’t just wait,” she explains sadly, wiping phantom dust off the top of her fridge and rubbing two fingers together. 

“I know but it’s been a while, and sometimes I can’t help but wonder if you’re happy here. I know you’re successful and all but you just seem lonely sometimes,” her sister says, putting the card back down and walking to the seats by her counter. 

“I’m okay really, and I’ll be home for Christmas. I like it here,” she says, turning around to see a concerned look on Jordan’s face. It’s not like she’s lying, she does love the city and really, she isn’t alone anymore. Not since him. 

“I’m just looking out for you,” her sister says, calmly, ending the conversation gracefully like she can always be trusted to. It’s one of the things she loves most about her sister, how she always knows when something needs to be over. 

It’s a bit of awkward silence and the room feels colder than usual until Jordan opens the box of strawberries and grabs a blanket and drags her to the couch where they watch cheesy reality TV. At some point her sister raids her room for the nail polish she keeps in her bedside drawer and they lay towels all over every near surface that could possibly get a nail polish stain before opening any bottles. 

By the end of the day her cheeks hurt from smiling and her toes are a light sky blue and her hair has been knotted into some semblance of an online tutorial for a braid that her sister didn’t have the length or patience to do on herself. She’s scrolling through her phone looking for an old picture she’d found in the box of things she’d brought to Toronto that she’d meant to show Jordan weeks ago when her phone vibrates and his name pops up on her screen. 

Jordan’s distracted by a bowl of popcorn and her recent design plans so she taps her lightly on the thigh, mimicking picking up a phone with one hand and her sister shoots her a thumbs up before getting back to the drawings. 

She nearly runs to her room, shutting the door quietly before pressing the accept call button. 

“Hey,” she breathes, cradling the phone in her hand as she sits on the edge of her bed. 

“Hey.”

“Why’d you call?” 

“I texted you earlier and you didn’t reply and I was just wondering what you were doing,” he says casually over the phone.

“My sister came for a surprise visit,” she says, which is met by an understanding noise from him. 

“Does she by any chance hate me?” he asks curiously and she can’t help but let out a breathy laugh. 

“You’re known as that guy I work with and hate to her,” she says, laughing. “I’ve spent many hours complaining over the phone about you, so I don’t think you’re on her list of favourite people” she admits, expecting a laugh or even something mocking in return but he’s only silent on the other end. 

“Hey? Scott?” she says, calling out for him when the line is dead for a few seconds too long which is met by a generic noise on his part to confirm his presence. “She was impressed you got me flowers if that helps,” she offers, which is only rewarded with a sigh on his end. 

“Anyway,” he says pausing and the silence is a bit too loud for her liking. “I just wanted to check in on you, make sure everything was good,” he says a bit dejectedly. 

“Okay” She says nervously, chewing on her lip, wondering what went wrong so fast. 

“Bye,” he says quietly before hanging up the phone. 

Tessa: ?  
Scott: ?

She sits on the side of her bed for a few minutes, staring at his contact and arguing with herself over whether or not she should call him back. Ultimately she decides that today is for her sister and she’s already been away long enough. She throws her phone by her pillows so that we won’t check it every minute for a text from him and leaves her room to see Jordan in a strange pose with one leg in the air on her carpet. 

“Jo, what are you doing?” she asks confused, tilting her head to try to see what her sister has gotten herself into. 

“A yoga pose I found on Instagram, it’s supposed to release tension in your back,” she informs from upside down turning to look at Tessa and smiling. 

She laughs and all of a sudden things seem a bit better. 

Tessa: 1

*********

She’s just pressed send on an email when he walks back into the office after another one of his long excursions, shutting the door carefully behind him and looking tired.

She raises her eyebrows at him and he raises both hands in the air to show he has no suspicious papers in either one of them, sits in his chair with his arms still up until she rolls her eyes and he drops them with a sigh. 

Her computer makes a small dinging noise and a red dot pops up on their messaging tab showing the number one. She opens it to find a message that says _When is your birthday?_ followed by another line of question marks. 

“May 17th, why?” she says to him curtly, a bit annoyed with him for leaving without explanation again but curious to what the question is about. 

“Let it be known that I knew that but was merely asking for dramatic effect,” he says informatively, “so you can think of this as a late birthday present,” he adds quietly, handing her a white envelope.

She takes it from him, her annoyed feelings fading immediately, and uses the envelope opener in her drawer to tear open the top which makes him shake his head and gaze up at the ceiling. 

She feels two hard pieces of stiff paper and pulls them out to see that they're tickets. “Scott what are—” she begins to say, turning them so they’re not upside down, breath catching in her throat when she sees what they’re for. “You bought tickets for the ballet,” she breathes, so soft her lips barely touch. “Scott I really can’t accept this— how expensive were these?” She asks looking up at him and there’s a soft smile on his face. 

“Well I mean they’re for both of us, so you only have to accept one of them and really don’t worry, I won them.” 

“You won them?” she asks, confused. 

“Well technically my mom used to teach a skater who became a ballerina and sometimes she gets free tickets, they’re good ones too,” he says, leaning across the desk to show her the row they’re in. “See? Not too bad huh?” He grins at her, boyish and shy as he scans her eyes. She’s been rendered speechless, everything she wants to say caught up in her throat. 

“We can get dressed up and everything, if you’re looking for suggestions I really like the one with the—” he pauses, drawing a circle with his finger in the air.

“The open back?” She laughs, finally finding her voice and he nods, smiling awkwardly at her over his computer monitor. 

She thinks he might have picked the worst day to keep the shades open, even one more day of the claustrophobic feeling would have been better. Her mother and sister had tried to bring her to the ballet before but sitting in the audience while watching her childhood friends who had achieved their dreams take the stage had been too much at the time and eventually they stopped trying. Years and plenty of healing later, she’s always wanted to try, to see if maybe she could just live in the memories and be happy but the daunting thought of going alone has always been too scary and in some ways she can’t bear to hear her family reminiscing in the seats beside her. She’s supposed to smile at them from the stage, spot the bouquet of flowers hidden behind their backs as they meet her in the dressing room. Their comments in hushed tones from the cushioned seats beside her about how it could’ve been her up there would re-open too many wounds. Something about Scott takes the pressure off, she doesn’t have anything to prove to him, no history of hers for him to comment on. 

“Thank you,” she breathes, so soft she barely feel the words leaving her mouth but he understands, in some ways he always has. 

And so she sits on the edge of her seat the entire rest of the day, stealing glances at him only when she can afford to, touches the ceramic ballerina on her desk and tries to imagine how it might feel. 

He knocks on her door at seven in the same getup he was wearing at the opening for the hall months ago. The white shirt compliments his frame just as well as it had the last time. Buttons up the front and suspenders with an artfully positioned bow tie all in black contrast the white beautifully. 

He smiles and hands her a chocolate bar. “I thought about bringing flowers but you have some already and I thought you’d like this better anyways,” he says somewhat casually, his eyes flitting all around the room. She could swear he sounds the slightest bit nervous. 

She laughs a bit, placing it on the counter before pulling her hair over one shoulder and turning around so he can do up the clasp at the nape of her neck.

“I do,” she admits, looking over her shoulder at him and he winks charmingly, even if him chewing the inside of his cheek gives his nerves away. She hears the snap of the clasp popping into place and feels his hands at the base of her neck smoothing the fabric down. She closes her eyes for a second, lets out a breath before turning to face him with a soft smile. 

Sliding her feet into a pair of gold heels and shrugging on a dark felt wool coat, she quickly picks up her clutch before exiting her apartment and locking the door behind them both. 

“How do you feel?” he says in the elevator ride down, his hand clasped in hers, the soft music of the elevator in the background. 

“Excited, a bit nervous,” she says somewhat shakily, focusing her attention on the floor. He squeezes her hand in his, smiling at her gently. 

“Say the word and we can fix it, whatever you need,” he says reassuringly. She blinks a few times, letting out a breath before turning to him and wrapping both her arms around his neck, holding onto him tightly. 

“Thank you,” she whispers into his ear, closing her eyes and breathing shakily out against his shoulder. The ding of the elevator doors opening brings her back to the present, makes her reluctantly drop her arms as they both walk out of the elevator. Lately, it’s begun to unexpectedly snow in Toronto, just sparse flurries that melt the second they touch the ground but regardless, the flakes stick to his hair on the short walk to his car, flakes she brushes off carefully with a grin, smoothing out a spare one that had gotten into his eyebrow. 

He opens the passenger side door of his car for her and even lets her pick the music, something she has to make him repeat because she can’t believe it. It’s not too long of a ride from her apartment to the theatre because for all she had tried since she was eighteen, she had never really been able to escape the sound of a piano and rosin crunching under hard shoes. 

Walking through the glass doors is easier than she had expected, the tiles in shades of grey proving no resistance to each step she makes. He grabs two booklets from the desk at the front where they get their tickets scanned and while flipping through it she recognizes faces, rooms, teachers she had known so long ago. If she closes her eyes, she almost feels like she’s there again.

She drags him to the boutique in the corner of the bottom floor, running her hand across shirts embellished with the school’s logo and shiny silver zippers on jackets. In the end, after flipping through books, she settles on a beautiful copy of Anna Karenina, gold details all along the spine and the book’s title printed in typewriter font. 

They climb up stairs made of frosted glass, each clack of her heels sounding rhythmically against the steps, the wall of paneled wood to her right racing upwards in her peripheral vision. They even attend a pre-show talk, sitting on a level of honey coloured wood as a man in a suit informs them about the complexity of the story and the training that went into it. He whispers in her ear the whole time about how beautiful they building they sit in is, about the huge glass walls and neutral colours that blend seamlessly together. 

It’s an architect's dream, to design something like this. She can see in his eyes when they enter the theatre how fascinating it is, all the arches and levels and design elements. She thinks it’s funny, her two dreams mixing together so seamlessly. All she had wanted to be was someone on that stage but as she looks up at the intricate ceiling and ideas start exploding in her head like newborn stars, she thinks she might be more than happy to just be a spectator for a bit. Sure, looking out at the audience had been a feeling like no other, deafening applause sounding in her ears, but you don’t really see much from the stage other then sound and shapes. In all her time there growing up, she had never noticed much else than the floor conditions and the location of every wing. Now, she finds every nook and cranny she can, maps them out until they form patterns. She supposes it's a different kind of beauty. 

A woman in black dress shoes that squeak against the polished floor shows them to their seats, which end up being more than good and are on the verge of unbelievable. There’s a man sitting to their right with an open notebook in his lap and a pen in one hand and two young girls in knit tights and poofy dresses to their left, heads bent together as a woman she assumes is their mother helps read the writing on their tickets aloud. 

Whether it’s the too-expensive wine they waited in a long line to buy or how something about the ballet has a different sort of energy that can’t quite be placed is a mystery to her, but sitting in the seats that turn out to be shockingly good, she feels oddly calm. No fear or regret or sickness rising in her throat. Just calm as the orchestra tunes to the oboe, that one single note that starts it all. The action that demands change, signals something great to come. She looks over at him, how attentively he looks at the stage and wonders what their oboe moment was, what happened that changed them so drastically. 

It’s lovely being back. 

She had forgotten what it felt like to have satin ribbon wrapped around her ankles and chiffon hanging by her knees. She moves her head ever so slightly in tune with the music, gets so caught up in everything that for a moment she doesn’t feel like a spectator anymore. The music comes to a pause and the audience erupts with praise and she spares a second to glance at him to see him already looking at her, a slight smile on his face and the brightness of thousands of stars in his eyes. 

She figures it out all of the sudden. How he is the moment every instrument tunes together. The strings on each violin hitting the same frequency, the hum and vibration going through her body and setting her alight.

He is the lowest note the piano could play. A C chord sounding in pure clarity.

His bass clef hand grabs ahold of hers and she squeezes back tight, letting out a breath before turning her attention back to the stage. 

At intermission she buys a chocolate bar from the counter that they almost split because although she had the intention to give him half, one piece ended up bigger than the other and he let her have the big piece with a wave of his hand. She even asks someone to take a picture of them at the top of the stairs by the panelled wood wall. He places his hand on her lower back and she rests her temple just against his, and the flash goes off and before she knows it the house lights are flickering and they both shuffle their way back into the theatre. He also requests that she send the picture to her sister to show that he isn’t treating her badly which she giggles at before tying a short message and sending the picture off just as the lights go down. 

He has his hand laid comfortingly on hers throughout the whole second act, and the second intermission. Her head leant against his chest as they choose to stay in their seats this time, and another picture sent to her sister that’s mostly washed out from the overhead lights and taken at the worst angle. She giggles lightly when he sticks his tongue out for one, smiles brightly when she aims the camera at only him and twists so she can get the entire theatre in the background. Before she can accept it, the final curtain falls and the lights rise and everyone in the audience is blinking away the mirage of dancing and theatrics and two lovers in silk. 

She looks over at him and a small laugh escapes her lips, falling from her mouth like birdsong and blending with the chatter of the theatre. He stands and she rises to meet him and she doesn’t have a second to think before he wraps her in his arms, holds her in the midst of thousands of people with his hands surely making marks on the bare skin of her back. She’ll place her hands on the spots she felt his touch on her skin later, twisting in her bathroom mirror and craning her neck to see the full expanse of her back. 

He lets her go slowly when their row begins to filter out but holds onto her with one of his hands and carries both their programs in the other. They shuffle out of the theatre, the swell of voices recalling parts they had enjoyed and things they had noticed to others, but she stays silent for the most part, looking up at the high ceilings and the lights dotting every balcony for as long as she can, eyes lowering only to meet his to see him looking at her warmly. 

Walking outside the front doors, it’s immediately evident that the small bit of snow had turned to rain since they’ve been in the theatre and the reflections of streetlights and digital advertising boards paint watercolour pictures all over the wet ground. She hops over cracks in the sidewalk with him on the walk to their car because she’s always been a bit superstitious, figures the old penny in the pocket of her favourite coat and her grandmother’s lucky ring can attest to it. 

Once they’re both safely in his car, he comes up with the genius idea of going to get food and bringing it back to his apartment to eat, which is how she ends up with her cheek pressed against his chest with his arms loosely wrapped around her in the front walkway of a ’50s-esque diner. The jukebox in the corner is clearly for show but the speakers play old music she hasn’t heard through anything other than her phone’s speakers for while. A few people sit in booths and tables throughout the restaurant, a young girl with pale pink hair by the back sipping on a milkshake and laughing at something her girlfriend must have said, but overall, it’s empty with the exception of a woman who looks to be in her fifties, wearing an apron and wiping tables. 

She closes her eyes, loops her arms around him underneath his coat, and hears him chuckle quietly. 

“Tired?” he asks, pushing a stray piece of hair out of her eyes. 

She breathes in once. “No way, just getting ahead on sleep for later. I’m going to be so well-rested,” she says slowly, yawning. 

She hears the clack of heels against the floor and suddenly the hands that rest on her lower back fall as a woman with a pen tucked behind her ear brings out food in takeout boxes. 

She carries them on her lap during the rest of the ride to her apartment, the heat of cooked food coming from the boxes warming her thighs while the type of music that only seems to be on late at night plays low on the radio. Before she knows it they’re walking through the front door and wiping their shoes off on her front mat, putting the boxes in the oven to keep them warm while they both change into soft cotton, a tank top and shorts for her and the sweats and t shirt he had left at her house on him. 

Maybe it really clicks in for the first time in that moment, when he reaches into the part of her closet that’s somehow become his without even asking. When he dips his finger into her tub of moisturizer like he has a million times before, his toothbrush sitting in the holder with bristles still wet from that morning. It nearly knocks her off her feet and she finds herself holding onto the edge of the counter for stability, her head spinning a bit as she looks at the image of both of them standing in her bathroom, stealing glances at each other in her polished mirror. 

She can almost feel a tightening around her heart, a pain in her chest that feels so very real and she must make a face because he pauses to look at her, his eyebrows furrowing in concern as he searches her eyes. 

“You okay?” he asks, brushing a thumb across her cheekbone. 

_‘I love you’_ she wants to say but it comes out as a watery “yea” as she gazes up at him. 

He looks like he wants to say something else, opens his mouth once before closing it and swallowing, kissing her softly on her brow bone instead. She wants him to tell her off like he had so many times before, without a care, tell her not to be so impetuous, so careless but he only looks at her with such tenderness in his eyes that she feels like she might break, averting her eyes and screwing the lid back on her tub of moisturizer to keep her from spilling all her secrets. 

They end up sprawled on two couches, fries falling out of their boxes onto her glass table but she doesn’t really seem to care that much. 

She even omits coasters for what feels like the first time in her life. She laughs too hard at a few of his jokes, her hair falling out of the bun she had tugged it into earlier and framing her face in feather-light pieces. She turns on the television and they play Jeopardy! along with the contestants, keeping track of points in their heads at the beginning but that quickly fades as she becomes less focused on winning and switches to admiring the colour in his cheeks and the brightness of his eyes. She tells him somewhere through the third episode when her eyelids begin to droop that she thinks he’s beautiful. He flushes pink all over, chews on his lip with a barely concealed smile and loses five rounds in a row. 

“Don’t fall asleep,” she mumbles when neither of them have spoken for some time and the television is on so low it may as well be muted. She’s barely audible with the way her face is slumped against one of her throw pillows. “I can’t carry you to the bed.” 

She can just hear him laugh from the other couch, soft and tired “Why? Not as strong as me?” he jokes. 

“In your dreams, Moir,” she manages to sound out, “I’m just choosing not to have that strength right now, any other day I’d take you down,” she informs him seriously. She thinks she might be a bit delirious with tiredness. 

He giggles from across the room, muffled by the sound of cushions. “You’re right, I would never challenge you to a brawl because I would surely lose.” 

“Got that right,” she mumbles. 

She hears the sound of cushions shifting and the TV shutting off and next thing she knows his arms are supporting her and her head is leaning against his shoulder, arms loosely wrapped around his neck with her eyes closed. 

“Can I tell you a secret?” he asks, his words jumbling together in her ear, giggling a bit with his breath warm on the side of her neck. “I used to take the subway everyday just to be near you longer, I like you so much,” he mumbles, his words almost indistinct. 

“Really?” she says sluggishly.

“Yeah,” he breathes, walking into her room and lowering her carefully onto the bed. 

“That’s silly,” she says drowsily, “you have such a nice car, why would you take the subway for me?” she questions, rubbing at her eyes.

He closes the door behind him and climbs in beside her, pulling her back towards him until she’s tucked against his front with his face buried against the back of her neck. “I don’t know” he says quietly, all of their words so much more meaningful in the dark for reasons she can’t place. “I just like being near you.” 

“This might be a bit of a shocker,” she slurs, “but you’re near me all day.” She dissolves into a fit of giggles, which prompts him to do the same. 

Her cheeks hurt a bit from laughing and she might be so tired that her eyes burn a bit every time she blinks.

“I like to be near you always,” he pieces together slowly once they’ve both calmed down, his breathing beginning to go even and slow against the nape of her neck. “All the time, as much as I can,” he trails off. 

“I like being near you too, I think you’re lovely.” she says, and she can feel his smile against her, feels his arms securely holding her. 

“Lovely,” he repeats into her skin like he’s testing the way it feels on his tongue, the tickle of his voice against the back of her neck makes her squirm a bit in his arms, even in her tired state. 

“Can you tell me one more secret?” she whispers suddenly, feeling bold, playing with one of hands as her eyelids begin to droop. 

“What do you want to hear?” he asks, snuggling further against her. 

“Where do you keep going?” she mumbles. “You leave the office all the time and come back looking tired. I get worried,” she admits, tracing one of his life lines. 

He’s quiet for so long that she thinks maybe he’s fallen asleep and resigns to the fact that she may never get the answer to that question. 

“I can’t tell you right now,” he says softly, “soon, but I promise I’m okay, you don’t have to worry.” 

“I do though.” 

“I know,” he says, a bit sadly. 

She feels so bare and open talking to him like this, maybe because she can’t see his face and the moonlight coming from the open window is so pure and calm when it’s washed over them. 

“The project is almost over,” she says quietly, the only other sound being the white noise of cars passing by on the street below. 

“Are you scared?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” she admits, pulling his hand towards herself so that it’s tucked under her chin. 

“Me too,” he confides, pressing the softest of kisses to her bare shoulder. She lets out a shaky breath, swallows twice before speaking again. She has to say something, neither of them have the time to stall any longer. 

“I—” She begins nervously, mouth feeling dry. She doesn’t know how to make him understand, doesn’t know how to say it without spelling out exactly how she feels. She isn’t ready to drop her cards. “—I, well…..I um,” she stutters, voice cracking somewhere in the middle and going hoarse even though she’s barely spoken any words at all. 

“I know,” is all he says, his voice just as rough and broken as hers, the room suddenly feeling deafeningly quiet. “We’re going to be okay,” is what he gets out after some time, after she breathes in and out until the sharp pain at the back of her throat begins to lessen. 

“Promise?” she croaks out with her last bit of air. 

“Promise,” he repeats back to her in an even tone of voice that she can’t help but hold on to. She tucks that promise into the space between their joint hands and her clavicle, protects it there for safekeeping until daylight where it’s easier to believe in those types of things. Presses kisses to each of his knuckles to lock it all in, secure like fortresses and old castles and skyscrapers they build out of paper and glue. 

She falls asleep with that promise, lets it persuade her eyelids to close, coax her breathing to slow, her heartbeat to fall steady like the metronome on her mother's piano. His bass clef hand tangled in hers. 

*******

Construction passes her by in a whirlwind, the amount of progression made on the site seeming to double every time they visit. Sometimes they sit in his car and watch from inside with their hands pressed to the heat vents, splitting a muffin in half and eating in between sips of coffee or tea. Sometimes they wander through the structure, her low heels making dull thuds against the wood laid out as flooring. 

She begins to visualize it all together, the beautiful shapes they had created as one taking form in a rough unfinished way that she can’t help but admire in its authenticity. She climbs up the unfinished stairs and imagines looking down at him through the spaces the completed building will form. She traces the open spots left near the ceiling imagines the panels of coloured glass that will leave spots of colour all over the floor. She thinks that might be her favourite idea of his, that and the beautifully crafted doorway he had made at the entrance to the library. 

As she’s staring up at the high ceilings, she feels his hand slip into hers, feels his hand squeeze hers once before releasing. She thinks the sun must have been waiting for them because in that moment the cloudy day suddenly becomes a bit warmer, the biggest star in their sky sending beams of light through all the open holes left without sheets of glass. She feels the tip of her nose catch a bit of the sudden heat, smiles at him and pushes up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, wiping away the lipstick stain before letting him go and wandering off to study a new part of their project’s skeleton. It’s bittersweet, the way that as the walls continue to rise their time diminishes, as soon she won’t have the pleasure to hold at least a bit of his heart in her own. 

She tries to ignore it for the most part though, their ticking clock and fleeting hours passing them by, so she searches for their project’s bones instead. Tries to find skeleton keys between the scraps of unused material that could unlock another way out. She nearly finds herself starting to feel as though she should have pursued archaeology instead of architecture. In a way she almost sees it as searching for remains, performing a dissection, picking apart every element as she walks through archways and unfinished rooms, thinking of everything that is left to come. 

********

The day the building is officially finished they drive past in twenty times. 

They take turns pointing out everything they possibly can, their fingertips leaving marks on his car’s windows that he can’t be bothered to wipe off. 

He holds onto her tight that night like he’s scared she’ll disappear, and maybe it’s why she finds herself almost telling him again. Though, she’s never been one for public speaking and in those moments articulating her thoughts feels like a Herculean task. She decides she’d rather let the sweeping curves she’d modeled after his hair and the sharp angles she’d drawn up while admiring the lines of his jaw speak for her. 

Even if they can’t quite piece together the three words that have been on the tip of her tongue for months. 

********

“Are you scared?” he’d whispered into her hair the night before the opening. 

“Yes,” she’d breathed, her voice shaking slightly. She remembers fearing that if she had spoken any louder the tremor in her voice would have caused everything on her shelves to fall to the floor.

*********

Pushing open the doors with her own two hands almost feels like an out-of-body experience. 

She’s bundled up in a long felt coat with scarves wrapped around her neck, knit gloves on and her favourite boots tied by her knees. For the first time in all the years she’s known him, he’s dressed similarly. Coat and hat with his hands shoved in both his pockets, smiling at her as they walk through the doors. 

In her mind she had expected fireworks exploding and a ribbon cutting but in all actuality, nobody looks twice at them as they walk into the building, stomping snow off of their boots and pulling off gloves. 

The second they’re done admiring the place in awe, all she wants to do is touch everything. The polished wood benches and beautiful coloured glass and every single doorknob she can reach. In the far room, young children climb a rock wall designed to look like a princess’s tower, waiting in line with different coloured helmets covering their heads. Over by the floor-to-ceiling windows are people enjoying pastries and coffee on white circle tables, a group of what looks to be college-aged kids on laptops with papers spread out in front of them. The thing that really catches her eye though is the library.

She steps through that doorway she had crossed over so many times before, when it was just a raw outline, traces the ridges in the wood with her finger as she enters the room. Bookcases made of dark wood are lined up in rows, signs above each section written in charcoal grey. She’s running her hands over the spines of books when she hears a voice that seems like it’s coming from inside the bookshelf whisper her name. She leans closer pulling one of the books spines out of the way only to see his eyes looking at her through the gap she made. 

“Hey,” he says, boyishly, tilting his head just so before disappearing. 

She puts the book back in its place, chuckles a bit, shaking her head as he rounds the corner and walks to her. 

“Finally done,” he remarks quietly, looking up at the cathedral-like ceiling. “Looks nice, huh?” he asks, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear. 

“Better than I could have imagined.” She smiles, gazing at the rest of the room. There are kids laying on bean bag chairs with picture books and a couple leant against each other as they read long novels. A mother holding her son up to a shelf while he pulls a book down and a group of kids crowded around a computer, letting out a whispered sound of excitement every few seconds. 

“Right,” he says, following her line of sight towards the people enjoying the project they had made together. “It almost doesn’t feel real, but I guess it’s really done,” he says quietly, turning back to look at her. 

“Yes,” she says, a sudden wave of sadness washing over her as she searches his eyes for something. She wants to find anything there that she can hold onto while it can still be explained away. Feels her throat start to get tighter the longer she looks at him. 

“Hey, none of that,” he says comfortingly, picking up on her change in mood, grabbing ahold of both her hands with his own and rubbing a thumb over her wrist. 

She nods, sniffling once and shaking her head a bit to try to suppress some of the emotion that keeps spilling out of her. 

His focus shifts from her eyes to behind her, eyebrows furrowing as he tilts his head to the side. 

“What?” she says, confused, sniffling once again as she looks behind her. 

He drops her hands, pulling a book from the shelf, one with beautiful gold lettering on the front and a hard cover. He flips through the pages one by one, scenes of Italy in paintings until he comes across one of Murano, Venice. 

“You were here, right?” he asks, pointing at the painting. They both gaze down at it, the boats docked at the sides of the canal, and tall multi-coloured buildings all connected together, lining the street like tapestries. 

“Yea, that was a while ago though,” she explains, confused as he continues to gaze at the painting. 

“I picture you here, all the time,” he says, like he's in a trance, “you came back with that glass ballerina and wore those long linen skirts for a month afterwards.” He trails off, tracing the lines of the painting with one finger. “They would kind of fly behind you when you walked, I’d always wondered if that’s how you looked when you were there,” he finishes, his voice so soft by the end she barely hears it. 

She feels like the brain is working overtime to process as the things he has just said, like it can’t quite connect what’s happening to her. 

“What?” is all she manages to get out, looking up at him cautiously. 

He gazes at the painting for a few seconds longer before closing it and placing it back on the shelf. 

“You have to know…” is what he says when he looks at her again, some look in his eyes that she can’t quite place, “...how I feel…” he trails off. 

She shakes her head silently, her eyes wide as she watches his face switch to confusion. 

He shakes his head slightly, grabs ahold of one of her hands. “I want to show you something,” is what he says as he’s leading her out of the library. 

He walks with her all the way to the outdoor rink, past the windows that will fill the floor with colour when light shines through and the couches by the carpeted area. Her hand in his until they get to the lockers they’d argued over so many months before. She laughs a bit when she thinks about it, which prompts him to throw a closed lipped smile her way. He looks at the lockers for a second before finding the one he’d wanted, pulling a key out of his pocket and opening it up. 

“Scott, what?” she asks, confused, but he only hums, pulling out a cloth bag that to her confusion contains two pairs of skates. One white and one black. 

He looks at her hopefully as he hands her the white pair, her mouth falling open as she looks at them. They’re a bit scratched, with scuffs along the leather and frayed laces but overall they look wearable. 

“Do you know how to put skates on?” is what he asks once she has enough time to examine them. She looks inside the boot, flips up the tongue only to see that they’re exactly her size. 

“Where did you get these?” she questions, looking over at him, “And how did you get my size?” 

“I grabbed a pair from my mom when I want to visit her a bit ago, she’s a skating coach remember,” he explains and she nods, “as for your size, I just had to check your shoes. It was a bit odd looking through your shoe closet while you were asleep but they should fit I think,” he says a bit awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his neck. 

“The last time you went back home was months ago,” she says, confused, only to be met by raised eyebrows on his part and a fond look. 

He leads her over to the benches and tells her to sit down while he undoes the laces on her skates. 

She glances back at the rink a few times, biting her lip before speaking up, “Scott, I really don’t know how to skate,” is what she says eventually. 

“I’ll hold onto you the whole time, I promise you’ll never be alone,” he replies, looking at her seriously before helping her put on the boot. She nods after some time and he smiles, sliding it onto her foot, a glimmer in his eyes as he laces up both her skates. 

When he’s done with both his and hers he helps her stand up, steps into the ice first and keeps both her hands in his as she steps on after him cautiously. As soon as her blades touch the ice she nearly falls over, but he secures her around the waist, smiles at her comfortingly as she learns to move properly. 

After a bit she can make her way around the rink with only her hand in his, tracing parallel lines together as they skate with families and couples, him carefully guiding her out of the way of young kids when she loses control of speed and teaching her how to stop properly. It’s only when she relaxes that she sees how beautiful it is, the lights hung on strings over them that keep the rink glowing, the stars over their heads that twinkle and wink in the night. She holds his hand a big tighter in hers, squeezes it once and smiles warmly at him. 

She doesn’t notice he’s steering her into the center of the rink until she’s there, standing still with people moving all around her, music playing low on the radio speakers that surround the ice. 

He moves to stand behind her, holding her lightly by the shoulders to keep her steady. 

“I’ve been wanting to tell you for so long,” he murmurs into her ear, “but I’ve been planning this since forever, I knew it had to happen like this or you wouldn’t see it all,” he says. She turns to face him but he holds her in place, pointing at the canopy over the locker area. 

“What colour is that?” he asks her.

“Green,” she replies easily, eyebrows furrowing in confusion as she tries to figure out where he’s going with it all. 

“How about the boards?” he says evenly, turning her attention to them instead.

“Green,” she says again, a bit slower than the last time. 

“The wiring on the lights?” he says, prompting her to look up. 

“Green.” 

He turns her until she’s facing him, until she can’t look anywhere but his eyes. 

“The colour I put everywhere, in all my projects?” 

“Green.” 

“The emerald on my desk?” he says, looking right at her. 

“Green,” she says, heart beating so loudly in her chest she thinks he must hear it. 

“Your eyes?” he asks hoarsely, looking at her with something like desperation. 

Her voice feels caught in her throat, stuck there, and she feels like she needs to pinch herself to check if she’s breathing. “Green,” she says breathlessly, her voice catching in the middle. 

He nods, searching her eyes, and in that moment she thinks he may even be admiring them. 

“Do you see now?” he asks quietly. “For so long, your eyes were the only thing I had, you would look at me across a room and my heart would stop. Every time I caught your eye, it felt like a victory. I may have moved our desks closer just so I could see them more,” he jokes, sliding his hands down from her shoulders to her hands. 

She can feel her eyes start to burn as water collects there, opens her mouth a few times to find that she has no way to say exactly how she feels in that moment. How to explain an emotion she’d never thought she would feel is something out of her ability. 

“You’ve had that rock on your desk since forever,” she gets out, voice soft as a single tear escapes and slides down her cheek.

He wipes it off, smiling at her gently. “Yes.” 

“That means you’ve—” she pauses, not sure how to say it, “—since forever,” she continues cautiously. 

“I’ve loved you since before you knew my name,” he says all at once, no fear or hesitation in his voice, clean words that turn her thoughts into a mess. 

“Then why all the years of—” she pauses, looking down at her feet. “Why did you hate me so much?” she finishes looking up at him to see sadness in his eyes. 

“T, I think the first time you met me, you glared at me and rolled your eyes. You hated me from the beginning, and I could never figure out why,” he explains sadly. 

She avoids his eyes, looking anywhere but his face. “You were good, and I wanted to be better, plus you played hockey and you flirted with every girl in a five mile radius,” she mumbles only to hear him let out a small laugh. 

“I was a real catch back then, what can I say?” he jokes quietly. She looks back up to see him smiling at her, fondness is his eves that feels so overwhelming when directed at her. 

That fondness changes in a second, his face falling as he looks at her. “But really, I am sorry, for everything, I just didn’t know what to do with the fact that you couldn’t stand being near me, I think I’d just accepted by that point that it was the only way I could get you to acknowledge me at all. Not that it was right in the slightest.” 

He trails off, taking a moment to pause before continuing. “Seriously though, I am sorry, I want you to know how much I regret doing anything that ever made you upset. None of it was okay,” he finishes, looking ashamed as he waits for her response. 

“I’m sorry too, for everything I said or did, and I’m sorry for treating you like that at the beginning, I don’t want that to be us ever again,” she finishes, looking at him remorsefully. 

His smile slowly grows, turning into something that looks relieved as she nods. 

“I say we start over,” he says calmly, “forget all that and try again.” 

“Me too,” she says hopefully, moving forwards to wrap her arms around him, holding him close until she feels him start to pull back.

“Since we’re starting new though,” he starts, looking a bit nervous, “I want to be completely honest with you,” he says. She nods, biting her lip and preparing for the worst. 

He looks around him like he’s checking to see if anyone’s listening. “You’re now the sole owner of our office,” he announces seriously, “and the highest level principal architect at the firm,” he finishes all in one breath, looking at her nervously as he waits for her reaction.

She shakes her head, disbelieving as he starts to speak again. “As of today I am no longer employed at Drawing Board Architecture and Design Firm,” he says seriously. 

“What? Why?” she nearly shouts, worry taking over. A million thoughts begin to race through her head. 

“I can’t work beside you and not belong to you, I just can’t handle it,” he begins. She starts to speak, to protest, to argue, to do anything she can to keep him near her but before she can, he opens his mouth once more. “However, I do have something set up for me and one other person if she chooses,” he says nervously. 

In that moment, she can’t speak, can’t say anything she wants to. “It’s where I keep disappearing to when I leave. It’s a new firm a few blocks away and it has beautiful rooms with the nicest ceiling I’ve ever seen. It’s going to have a good coffee maker and luxury construction gear and self watering plants because there’s this girl I’ve been trying to impress who I think would love it there and if she chooses to come I want to make it worthwhile for her,” he finishes, looking hopefully at her. 

“Scott I—” she begins, not knowing how to even respond. He’s bought a place and he wants to start again with her. He’s bought a place and he wants her to be a part of it. She thinks about where she works though, how the pay is good and how she loves the windows in her office and how safe it all seems. 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to Tess, I understand it’s a huge risk and I’m not putting any pressure on you, I just want you to know I think about you, all the time” he explains. “Really though, all I want you to do is to choose what you want,” he says honestly, letting her make the final choice. 

She thinks about how he’s spent so many days out to make this possible. How all the times he got called into their boss’ office alone must have been to negotiate the situation. How he left for her. She thinks about his bed and his kisses and the coffees he brings her. She thinks about sitting across from him and crying over him and laughing with him on her couch. She thinks about the green in everything he does, the ceilings in the hall and the boards in the rink, splattered all over his apartment and on his desk. She thinks about everything that has changed, how she’s gotten used to waking up with him, working with him, creating new masterpieces with him. 

She thinks about their names on a sign, of themselves against the world. Virtue and Moir sounding out over loudspeakers. She thinks about it all and she chooses him. 

“Yes,” she says, nodding, the flood of tears barely being kept back.

“Yeah?” he questions, looking shocked, his hands hovering over her. 

She nods again, laughs as he holds onto her tighter than he ever has before, lifts her until her skates leave the ice. She cries right there in the middle of what seems like a million people, with lights over her head and his arms around her. 

“I love you,” he mumbles against her coat. She laughs, presses a kiss to his cheek and buries herself in his warmth. She chooses him. 

Tessa: Scott

Scott: Tessa 

*******

_Fin _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank u so much for reading, as something that was literally six months of work because I lack motivation, its a huge relief to send this, which will probably be the last of my Vm fics into the world. it was a good run u guys!
> 
> if u wanna talk to me i used to be @buisnesspartners on tumblr and Twitter but i have since switched to @dansesurglace because we are classy ladies now who know basic french.
> 
> comments and likes are very much appreciated 
> 
> anyways tldr, thank you for reading as always, love to u all xoxo


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